What happens to suicides?

[Tryingtodobetter]

I've thought about suicide time and time again, occasionally throughout the years and as of late I really see no point in continuing being present on this plane. I had an experience today where I really questioned my existence again, in depth. My life has no value, no meaning, no purpose. I have no substantial savings, no transportation, no relationship, no true social circle, no home of my own, no semblance of true community- really nothing of worth using a societal metric or even using a "spiritual" one. I simply have no worth or purpose. I am very tired. I had things I would've liked to accomplish, though now it's as if the larger part of those desires have been whittled down by time and things unseen, inwardly and outwardly. I have lived far too long. This world holds nothing for me and the inverse is probably true as well.

 

I want to commit suicide and I would like to know the actual repercussions. I dont want to be told to "hang in there". My life is over. I just want to know where my destination is once I release myself from my mortal shell. I figured this forum would be one of the spaces visited by someone with a genuine answer to this question.

[sustainablefarm86]

1

Edited December 6, 2020 by King Jade

[rideforever]

Would it not be better to find a spiritual centre or even an intentional community and go live there for a while, and see how it is.

Society as it is does have the feeling of having no meaning, but that's just a terribly bad dream it keeps pumping out.

These other places provide shelter and time and space, where you can come back to your right mind.

It is worth trying such things.

It is difficult to say more without knowing people's personal circumstances, but sure when I look out into the media world and see so many bad things, well that feels like suicide right there.

But the world itself seems fine, apart from the dark movie mankind seems to like telling itself.

Anyway best to try some other options.

 

[Gerard]

What would happen if you go ahead:

 

1. You'll come back again. Earth most likely. We are not in a very good shape at the moment. There is a chance you'll experience an even a greater suffering!

2. Continue from where you left as in  resolve all the unresolved issues. 

 

Rebirth in exactly the same position is a risk I personally wouldn't play with. Just imagine starting all over again from baby to adult. It's just too much hard work!

 

Good luck

 

[Nintendao]

For now all that comes to mind is a variation on Pascal's Wager. Say you did somehow end up in Hell, things stand to get infinitely worse than they are now. Whereas if you serve out the rest of your time on Earth to search for God, then things stand to get infinitely better. I know which bet I'd take.

 

Edited July 13, 2019 by Nintendao

[neti neti]

Think sad. Really sad. Like shitting yourself. Constantly. And diapers. Lots and lots of diapers. 

 

Or, you may return as some poor abandoned puppy whose master just deserts in the rain, only to be mercilessly squashed by a semi. And then coming back again, as a cockroach or something else just as grotesquely short-lived for shunning the gift of life. Just really sad consequences. Much sadder than your perceived current circumstances. 

 

The cliche of, it could always be worse, is terribly accurate. All one has to do is look around for that truth to present itself.

But everything alternates in cycles from one extreme to another. Life pulsates back and forth, death is just the final copout.

 

Try to imagine existence without the many requirements we generally consider as needful, and you'll soon realize that true happiness isn't acquired or dependent upon circumstance. True happiness inherently consists of sorrow and suffering, for one cannot be without the other. True happiness is your very nature.

 

What we believe in our minds becomes as a god over us, standing between us and Reality. Because we so often trust fictions as truth, we become transfixed, stuck in place. Blinded and hypnotized against our conscious will to identify them for what they are. We're therefore rendered powerless by them, making ourselves unable to remove such impediments by our own will.

 

It often becomes too much for our egos to bear until life becomes so utterly painful that we'll try Anything to find relief. But do know that you will commit suicide only by Permission and Only as it serves the purpose of existence as a whole.

 

When we, in total frustration and hopelessness, admit that it's not in our power to remedy our state, the miraculous is then able to step in and rearrange such circumstances For us. Unless of course, you enjoy the predicament you've found yourself in, and deep down you just really really like the way things are right now...

Edited July 13, 2019 by neti neti

[Kar3n]

7 hours ago, Tryingtodobetter said:

I've thought about suicide time and time again, occasionally throughout the years and as of late I really see no point in continuing being present on this plane. I had an experience today where I really questioned my existence again, in depth. My life has no value, no meaning, no purpose. I have no substantial savings, no transportation, no relationship, no true social circle, no home of my own, no semblance of true community- really nothing of worth using a societal metric or even using a "spiritual" one. I simply have no worth or purpose. I am very tired. I had things I would've liked to accomplish, though now it's as if the larger part of those desires have been whittled down by time and things unseen, inwardly and outwardly. I have lived far too long. This world holds nothing for me and the inverse is probably true as well.

 

I want to commit suicide and I would like to know the actual repercussions. I dont want to be told to "hang in there". My life is over. I just want to know where my destination is once I release myself from my mortal shell. I figured this forum would be one of the spaces visited by someone with a genuine answer to this question.

I'd like to tell you a story and I hope you take it to heart...

 

On February 25, 2019 I received a phone call that changed me, my life and my entire family. My sister committed suicide. It has been the most devastating loss in my 48 years on this planet.

 

You see, from her journal I found that she felt insignificant, invisible, and helpless. She was very ill for many years and these feelings built a wall around the person we, her family and friends, thought she was. She told no one and sought no help.

 

Even though you may not realize it I hear you screaming for help. I hear you saying you really do not want to die, that you just want what you believe will make you happy. Please try to find one thing each day to live for and to love even if it is just to see the moon one more night.

 

I am begging you to live because you matter and you are worthy! You matter and are worthy in ways to others that you can not fathom right now! The devastation of suicide reaches far outside the circle of family and friends around you. It touches the lives of strangers, their children, their animals, their world is rocked too. Suicide is like an earthquake, only the aftershocks are felt for years not mere days. The pain is far reaching and the suffering is intense.

 

I wrote this shortly after my sister took her life. This is a glimpse of what happens after suicide.

 

Quote

So today is sibling's day?

 

My sibling took her life on February 25. She was sick; she was tired so she ended it for herself.

 

What she didn't realize was the trauma and heartache she would leave behind for those who love her. It is devastating on levels I didn't know existed.

 

I want everyone to know there is help to be had. I got help, it worked. I am still here, living because of the help I received.

 

People love you, especially your siblings. They love you and like me with my sister, you were likely their first love. Your family and siblings need you, they do not want to be without you so please, if you are hurting and tired of this life talk to someone. 

 

Please do not force your sibling(s) to spend a sibling's day without you. It will hurt them everyday, all day. They will dream of you and wake up wanting to call you. They will remember things and will ache for your physical presence and the sound of your laughter. They will continue to love you and carry the pain of losing you wishing they'd have been trusted enough to help you.

 

Please talk to someone. I will listen and talk with you. I will do everything I can to keep you on this earth so that you can find some happiness and a will to live because people do love you.

 

Please, please, please!

[Earl Grey]

7 hours ago, Tryingtodobetter said:

I've thought about suicide time and time again, occasionally throughout the years and as of late I really see no point in continuing being present on this plane. I had an experience today where I really questioned my existence again, in depth. My life has no value, no meaning, no purpose. I have no substantial savings, no transportation, no relationship, no true social circle, no home of my own, no semblance of true community- really nothing of worth using a societal metric or even using a "spiritual" one. I simply have no worth or purpose. I am very tired. I had things I would've liked to accomplish, though now it's as if the larger part of those desires have been whittled down by time and things unseen, inwardly and outwardly. I have lived far too long. This world holds nothing for me and the inverse is probably true as well.

 

I want to commit suicide and I would like to know the actual repercussions. I dont want to be told to "hang in there". My life is over. I just want to know where my destination is once I release myself from my mortal shell. I figured this forum would be one of the spaces visited by someone with a genuine answer to this question.

 

 

Four words: "This too shall pass."

 

Four more words: "You are not alone."

 

Four words, again: "You can do it."

 

Four final words: "You are worth it." 

 

Four closing words: "Not enough? Go here."

Edited July 13, 2019 by Earl Grey

[C T]

Does the saying, "Those with nothing left to lose stand to gain the most" make any sense to you at this point? 

 

The fact of the matter is, none of us actually possess anything, but the thing is, we imagine we do, and it is this imaginative worldview that propels many people's actions. Driven by craving, humans experience strife, unsatisfactoriness, and ultimately, through misunderstanding fundamental yet simple principles, bind themselves in this vicious loop which appear to be overwhelmingly forlorn, as if caught in an invisible trap that they are unable to extricate themselves from. Have you ever wondered why, among all the classes of beings, only humans appear to possess the knack to imagine and weave personal tales of woe? Do you ever ask yourself if there's a purpose to this? Truth is, there is. It only appears aimless when we begin to project comparatively opposing scenes onto the mind-screen, and imagine that these contrasting scenes are somehow more worthy & objective, and therein begins the big lie. 

 

We do not need to detest suffering, nor cherish the emancipation of it. Hope & fear is at the heart of all human miseries. 

 

Just contemplate on the idea if the way out of misery is thru the abandonment of both, and what freedom means when one has learnt of the inherent deception that is at the heart of the force that ignites hope & fear. 

 

Suicide is messy, and quite selfish, to be honest. I pray you will find a spark from somewhere to alter this forlorn wish. 

Since you have nothing left to lose, why not Practice being kind in small ways, if not to fellow humans, at least to yourself, or to animals, insects even. There are always opportunities for this. Though we may be enduring deep suffering, it does not remove the seed of compassion in our hearts. The potential for watering this seed by simple acts of kindness is always present, and even if you manage just one small act of kindness a week, or even one a month, it is something noble and worthy, and at the point of that one singular action, you are equal to Chenrezig and all other enlightened beings in all the cosmos, across all time and space. 

 

I pray for peace in your every step. 

 

 

 

 

[ilumairen]

 

Quote

I had an experience today where I really questioned my existence again, in depth. My life has no value, no meaning, no purpose. I have no substantial savings, no transportation, no relationship, no true social circle, no home of my own, no semblance of true community- really nothing of worth using a societal metric or even using a "spiritual" one. I simply have no worth or purpose. I am very tired. I had things I would've liked to accomplish, though now it's as if the larger part of those desires have been whittled down by time and things unseen, inwardly and outwardly. I have lived far too long. This world holds nothing for me and the inverse is probably true as well.

 

That's one hell of a discussion you had with yourself - soo many measuring sticks. What would happen if you let the measuring sticks go? What do things look like without the comparisons and ideals? Could this suffering be maintained without the internal dialogue feeding it?

 

I second CT's call to kindness and compassion - particularly towards yourself. 

 

[Toni]

Be strong friend. And let me quote a spanish poet: 

"What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction; and the greatest good is small; that all life is a dream, and dreams are dreams."

Hope it helps

[emptycup]

11 hours ago, Tryingtodobetter said:

I've thought about suicide time and time again, occasionally throughout the years and as of late I really see no point in continuing being present on this plane. I had an experience today where I really questioned my existence again, in depth. My life has no value, no meaning, no purpose. I have no substantial savings, no transportation, no relationship, no true social circle, no home of my own, no semblance of true community- really nothing of worth using a societal metric or even using a "spiritual" one. I simply have no worth or purpose. I am very tired. I had things I would've liked to accomplish, though now it's as if the larger part of those desires have been whittled down by time and things unseen, inwardly and outwardly. I have lived far too long. This world holds nothing for me and the inverse is probably true as well.

 

I want to commit suicide and I would like to know the actual repercussions. I dont want to be told to "hang in there". My life is over. I just want to know where my destination is once I release myself from my mortal shell. I figured this forum would be one of the spaces visited by someone with a genuine answer to this question.

There is no escape. Only an even more liminal space of seeming meaninglessness after death. Many souls would love to incarnate, but they don't have the privilege yet to come through again in this plane. Do not waste this opportunity. There is light at the end of the tunnel. WIth permission from your Higher Soul, I am sharing the Light that is within our access. Everyone's access. You may not possess anything of this world, but your gift is yourself. Your life. 

 

Always remember, out of nothing, we can choose to create anything and everything is possible. 

Once we reach zero point, the only way to go is not to press game over. But, to realise that as long as you're in the game, your soul still has something to learn from this plane.

[Zork]

IMHO suicide will only lead to a worse rebirth. One needs to have accumulated a lot of good karma or stepped away from the karmic circle before he/she can even fathom it. Otherwise it looks like trying to escape a labyrinth by restarting from the beginning instead of continuing.

There is no reason to do it. Fight on, get a better rebirth. You deserve it!

[Aetherous]

It sounds like you're quite serious, in which case it's very important that we recommend you speak to a professional right away. Here's the national suicide hotline for the US (if you live there): 1-800-273-8255. Please call them and talk it out with them, and hopefully they will be able to help you.

As for what you said...you judged the quality of your life based on a standard of looking at the external appearances of everyone else. Others have friends, relationships, success, etc, and you don't. The truth is, those other people have cultivated appearances of success, but they deal with the same things in life that you do. There's really not much difference in how valuable they are, in a true sense, versus how valuable you are. It's not that you lack value if you don't have a relationship, but someone in one is valuable. Valuable to whom?

What's valuable to you? This is your life. Who cares about the appearance of success?

 

You spoke of desires being whittled down. Sometimes certain spiritual teachings will discourage desire, insisting that it's bad, and as such those teachings can lead us to misunderstand the point. Perhaps to some extent that's happened here. It should not be encouraged that we lose our enthusiasm and zest for life. You mentioned things that you would've liked to accomplish...cultivate those more! Pay attention to what you like and want, and get those things! Enjoy the simple things in life, enjoy the steps it takes toward achieving goals, and finally, enjoy the rewarding feeling of achieving one little goal at a time. Start out small, trying to achieve one thing toward what you ultimately like and want for yourself.

 

Anyway...

 

Your main question here was what happens after a suicide. My spiritual teachers caution that what happens to those souls is so horrible that it can't even be mentioned. Suicide is considered by them to be the number one mistake a person can make in life, with horrendous consequences. It's apparently something that even in the afterlife, there's no coming back from. Eternally screwed.

As for myself, being a spiritual student who is still unaware of the truth about what happens in the afterlife, I don't know what exactly occurs.

But do consider that your conditions could be unceasingly worse off if you make that choice, and do call the number to get some real help. If you already have a plan to do it, contact the police right away and tell them that you have a plan and that you want help to prevent yourself from doing it.

Best of luck.

[Pilgrim]

😊

Edited August 1, 2019 by Pilgrim

[joeblast]

killing oneself is pointless.  maybe socrates can be excused for it, but that was capital punishment.

 

I'll guarantee every one of us who has had someone even remotely close to them do this, we ALL wish with every fiber of our beings that they were still here with us.  The problems are always temporary, but that solution sure isnt.

 

Spoiler

If you absolutely must kill yourself, at least do it properly and fold up your legs and stop your bodily processes with your mind; anything less is uncivilized

 

 

[can o' sardines]

Reminding. I want to help remind you. It seems you've forgotten. Happens to all of us.

Narratives. Recognizing these narratives. The Story of Separation.  The Story of Interbeing

 

I put in the spoilers a chapter of a book called The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible. It's a lot of words so for space saving I put it in this spoiler thing.

Spoiler

https://charleseisenstein.org/books/the-more-beautiful-world-our-hearts-know-is-possible/eng/initiation/

Chapter 36: Initiation

A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.

―Jorge Luis Borges

But will we make it? If, as in so many other questions, evidence and reason alone are insufficient to determine a belief, then how will we answer that question—especially when the answer implicates everything else, even our basic stories of self and world. I offered an answer earlier: to choose the story you will stand in.

How to choose? What will you believe, given how easily reason, logic, and evidence are conscripted to the service of a story? Here is an alternative: Choose the story that best embodies who you really are, who you wish to be, and who you are in fact becoming.

Behind the fog of helplessness of the question “Will we make it?” is a gateway to our power to choose and to create. Because written on its threshold is another question, the real question: “Who am I?”

The despair is only as valid as the story beneath it that generates what we believe possible. The story beneath it is the Story of Self. So who are you? Are you a discrete and separate individual in a world of other? Or are you the totality of all relationships, converging at a particular locus of attention? Get over the fantasy that you can answer this question by finding proof. Reading one more book on psi phenomena or past-life regression won’t satisfy your inner skeptic. No amount of evidence will be enough. You are just going to have to choose, without proof. Who are you?

The mystics have been offering us an answer for thousands of years—two answers. On the one hand, strip away everything that connects you to the world, your money, your relationships, your arms and legs, your language, and still something that is “you” is left. I am not this. I am not that. Something minus everything is nothing; hence the first answer: you are nothing. But when we go there, we find that nothing is not nothing, it is everything: all things spring from the void, and a speck of quantum vacuum has the energy of a billion suns.

And so the second answer: you are everything. Take away even the tiniest relationship and you are diminished as well; add one and you are increased; change any being in this cosmos, and you are altered as well. You are, therefore, everything: a web of relationship, each containing all.

That is the self of interbeing. Divested of “situation,” your attention is my attention is everyone’s attention. We are the same being looking out at the world through different eyes. And these “eyes,” these vantage points, are each unique. As the comedian Swami Beyondananda puts it, “You are a totally unique being—just like everybody else!”

I won’t say more about the nature of being. The more I say the less true it becomes. Besides, who am I to know what “you” are? So let’s just say that the separate self we have lived with, in various guises, for the last few centuries is one of many possible stories of self.

Who are you? It is not an objective question, which story and which self is the real you. It isn’t only that no accumulation of evidence will answer it; it is that there is no objective fact of the matter. There is, however, what is true. Can you sense that the truth of who you are is changing? Do you know that less and less are you the self of Separation?

The separate self that is afraid to give, afraid to serve, a victim of impersonal forces, and helpless to affect the hostile world out there very much is the same self that wants proof that it is not that self. I cannot prove it to you, I cannot prove that the Story of Interbeing is true, just as neither side can prove to the other that they are right in politics or often even in science. Reliance on certain proof is part of the old story, part of which is the story we call Objectivity. You are going to have to choose, and you can no longer take refuge from that choice in proof. This goes for every question you face. Which belief is true? All the more this is so for the question “Who am I?”

Do I still hear the cynic, the betrayed one, saying, “What happens if I choose to be the self of interbeing and therefore to live in a world-story in which healing is possible, but I am just deluding myself?” That question, you might recognize, carries the same energy as “Will we make it?” It is the plaintive cry of the separate self. “What if I am alone? What if I give and serve, but no one in this hostile world gives back to me and takes care of me?” The conclusion: “I’d better play it safe. I’d better look out for my own interests and maximize my own security.” Add up billions of people all thinking the same thing and acting from it, and you can see that it is from our collective immersion in that story that we have created its image and its confirmation in the world around us. We have created the evidence that we then insert into the foundation of our story as its justification.

Choose to live in a new story and you’ll experience a similar self-confirming positive feedback loop. You will have migrated into a different world, with different laws. I get letters all the time saying things like “I gave away all my money, and I can hardly believe the magic that has unfolded in my life.” Sometimes New Age teachers, being aware of such stories or having experienced themselves the results of liberation from scarcity programming, advocate that people change their beliefs around money. Easier said than done, when those beliefs are part of a much larger mosaic, an integral pattern at whose center lies “Who I am.” Only when that is changing can associated beliefs change with it, resolving into a new and more beautiful pattern. But if “who I am” hasn’t changed, it will drag other beliefs back into alignment with itself, with separation, no matter how hard you try to avoid “negativity.” Negativity is built in to our most basic mythology of self and world.

Ultimately, unless one has stepped at least partway into the Story of Interbeing, it will not only be impossible to change isolated derivative beliefs, it will also be impossible to create anything but the image of Separation in the world. Nothing you do will really be of service. Even if you fight against self-interest in order to “be a good person,” you are still serving the end of appearing (to oneself and others) as a good person, and not actually serving other people and the world. So stop trying to be a good person. Instead just choose who you are. What you create from that will be of far greater service than anything you achieve out of covert vanity. Besides, our semiconscious concept of “being good” is hopelessly entangled with mechanisms of social conformity and bourgeois morality that serve to perpetuate the status quo. It restrains us from taking the bold actions that disrupt the old story. In this regard, we might even have something to learn from the psychopaths.

Another reason why we could say that all the effective action toward a more beautiful world comes from “Who am I?” is that that question implies another: “Who are you?” In other words, we see others through the same lens as we see ourselves. Seeing others as interbeings who desire deeply to give and be of service, we will engage them accordingly, holding the space for them to see themselves that way too. If on the other hand we see them as selfish and separate, we will engage them accordingly, applying the tactics of force, and pushing them toward a story in which they are alone in a hostile universe.

Earlier I described how activist tactics that are based on leveraging an opponent’s fear of public opinion and desire for profit in effect say to that opponent, “I know you. You are selfish and corrupt. You don’t want to do the right thing, so we are going to have to force you.” To believe that about someone we must believe it about ourselves too, even if we tell ourselves that unlike them, we have overcome that in ourselves. Moreover, by believing that about someone we hold that story open for them, inviting them to fulfill that role. When they do, we feel vindicated in our tactics and our way of seeing them. But when we stand in the new story the same dynamic brings the opposite results. We look at everyone around us, including those we would have seen as opponents and all the people we judged, and we now telegraph to them, “I know you. You are a magnificent divine being who thirsts to express that divinity in service. You, like I, want to apply your gifts toward the creation of a more beautiful world.”

Most of us cannot stand alone in the new story—to do so would contradict the basic principle of interbeing. If you are part of me, then if you are in separation, so also is a part of me. Lord knows there are a lot of social and economic forces holding us in the old story. A miracle or a breakdown can catapult us temporarily out of the world of separation, but to stay there, most of us need help. This is something we can all offer each other. That is why I say enlightenment is a group effort.

The road to Reunion has many twists and turns. Sometimes a hairpin turn makes it look like each step takes us farther away from the destination. These turnarounds, even the dead ends and backtracks, are all part of the path through the new territory of interbeing. It is unfamiliar to us, that territory. There are few maps, and we have not yet learned to see the trail. We are following an invisible path, learning from each other how to follow it. As we do that, and as we learn to see its subtle markings, the path becomes visible. Absent a map, and in the very early stages of a new story, we can only follow our intuition at each choice point, guided by our heart-compass, not knowing how our turnings will add up to the destination. Frequently our habits of separation lead us to stray onto the old, worn paths that we can see. We have to develop new vision, to see the faint traces of ancient footsteps that lead out of the maze. We have to see the terrain itself, the truth behind the stories.

As we walk, the destination bobs in and out of view. Ascending a hill—there it is! Somehow my wanderings have taken me closer. Descending into a vale, feeling lost, searching for the right direction, I come to doubt that the destination I saw really exists. At those moments I meet another traveler. “Yes,” he says, “I have seen it too.” We share what we have learned about how to walk the invisible path. As more of us enter this territory, these meetings happen more frequently, and together we find our way toward the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

One common pattern on this path is that a first venture into new territory can be smooth for a while, but soon life provides an experience that says, “Are you sure? Are you sure this is where you want to live and who you want to be?” For example, you leave a job that provided financial security, trusting that you’ll be okay following your heart. But no miracle job opens, your savings dwindles, and the lurking fears that were hiding behind that assurance “it will work out somehow” come to the fore. Who are you, really? If everything had gone smoothly, you would not have to face that question full in the face. Sometimes a choice has to be stark to clarify who we really are. The “what if” fears come to pass, or look convincingly as if they will. A woman said to me, “I’m afraid that if I start standing up for what I want, then my husband will leave me.” Eventually she did just that—and her husband did leave her. Stop living the way you have lived, and maybe the worst will come to pass. At least it will threaten to. Then you will understand whether you are willing to make a real choice, or the conditional choice predicated on the hope it will all work out, and ready to be reversed as soon as it looks like it won’t.

When one goes through a series of initiations like this into the new story, he or she becomes strong in it. Being strong in it, one can hold that story open for other people. Even if someone cannot, in a moment of crisis or when facing their own initiation, believe in the Story of Interbeing, a strong, initiated person can believe it for them, holding that possibility open until they are ready to step into it. With each initiation we become stronger carriers, and our words and actions become part of that story’s telling.

I hope this book has served to strengthen you as a teller, a carrier, and a servant of the new Story of the People. I will end with a story of my own.

A Gathering of the Tribe

Once upon a time a great tribe of people lived in a world far away from ours. Whether far away in space, or in time, or even outside of time, we do not know. They lived in a state of enchantment and joy that few of us today dare to believe could exist, except in those exceptional peak experiences when we glimpse the true potential of life and mind.

One day the elders of the tribe called a meeting. They gathered around, and one of them spoke very solemnly. “My friends,” she said, “there is a world that needs our help. It is called Earth, and its fate hangs in the balance. Its humans have reached a critical point in their collective birthing, the same point our own planet was at one million years ago, and they will be stillborn without our help. Who would like to volunteer for a mission to this time and place, and render service to humanity?”

“Tell us more about this mission,” they asked.

“It is no small thing. Our shaman will put you into a deep, deep trance, so complete that you will forget who you are. You will live a human life, and in the beginning you will completely forget your origins. You will forget even our language and your own true name. You will be separated from the wonder and beauty of our world, and from the love that bathes us all. You will miss it deeply, yet you will be unable to name what you are missing. You will remember the love and beauty that we know to be normal only as a longing in your heart. Your memory will take the form of an intuitive knowledge, as you plunge into the painfully marred Earth, that a more beautiful world is possible.

“As you grow up in that world, your knowledge will be under constant assault. You will be told in a million ways that a world of destruction, violence, drudgery, anxiety, and degradation is normal. You may go through a time when you are completely alone, with no allies to affirm your knowledge of a more beautiful world. You may plunge into a depth of despair that we, in our world of light, cannot imagine. But no matter what, a spark of knowledge will never leave you. A memory of your true origin will be encoded in your DNA. That spark will lie within you, inextinguishable, until one day it is awakened.

“You see, even though you will feel, for a time, utterly alone, you will not be alone. We will send you assistance, help that you will experience as miraculous, experiences that you will describe as transcendent. These will fan that spark into a flame. For a few moments or hours or days, you will reawaken to the beauty and the joy that is meant to be. You will see it on Earth, for even though the planet and its people are deeply wounded, there is beauty there still, projected from past and future onto the present as a promise of what is possible and a reminder of what is real.

“After that glimpse, the flame may die down into an ember again as the routines of normal life there swallow you up. But after each awakening, they will seem less normal, and the story of that world will seem less real. The ember will glow brighter. When enough embers do that, they will all burst into flame together and sustain each other.

“Because remember, you will not be there alone. As you begin to awaken to your mission you will meet others of our tribe. You will recognize them by your common purpose, values, and intuitions, and by the similarity of the paths you have walked. As the condition of the planet Earth reaches crisis proportions, your paths will cross more and more. The time of loneliness, the time of thinking you might be crazy, will be over.

“You will find the people of your tribe all over the Earth, and become aware of them through the long-distance communication technologies used on that planet. But the real shift, the real quickening, will happen in face-to-face gatherings in special places. When many of you gather together you will launch a new stage on your journey, a journey that, I assure you, will end where it begins right now. Then, the mission that lay unconscious within you will flower into consciousness. Your intuitive rebellion against the world presented to you as normal will become an explicit quest to create a more beautiful one.”

A woman said, “Tell us more about the time of loneliness, that we might prepare for it.”

The elder said, “In the time of loneliness, you will always be seeking to reassure yourself that you are not crazy. You will do that by telling people all about what is wrong with the world, and you will feel a sense of betrayal when they don’t listen to you. You might hunger for stories of wrongness, atrocity, and ecological destruction, all of which confirm the validity of your intuition that a more beautiful world exists. But after you have fully received the help we will send you, and the quickening of your gatherings, you will no longer need to do that. Because you will know. Your energy will thereafter turn toward actively creating that more beautiful world.”

A tribeswoman asked, “How do you know this will work? Are you sure our shaman’s powers are great enough to send us on such a journey?”

The elder replied, “I know it will work because he has done it many times before. Many have already been sent to Earth, to live human lives, and to lay the groundwork for the mission you will undertake now. He’s been practicing! The only difference now is that many of you will venture there at once. What is new in the time you will live in, is that you will gather in critical mass, and each awaken the other to your mission. The heat you will generate will kindle the same spark that lies in every human being, for in truth, each one is from a tribe like ours. The whole galaxy and beyond is converging on Earth, for never before has a planet journeyed so far into Separation and made it back again. Those of you who go will be part of a new step in cosmic evolution.”

A tribesman asked, “Is there a danger we will become lost in that world, and never wake up from the shamanic trance? Is there a danger that the despair, the cynicism, the pain of separation will be so great that it will extinguish the spark of hope, the spark of our true selves and origin, and that we will be separated from our beloved ones forever?”

The elder replied, “That is impossible. The more deeply you get lost, the more powerful the help we will send you. You might experience it at the time as a collapse of your personal world, the loss of everything important to you. Later you will recognize the gift within it. We will never abandon you.”

Another man asked, “Is it possible that our mission will fail, and that this planet, Earth, will perish?”

The elder replied, “I will answer your question with a paradox. It is impossible that your mission will fail. Yet, its success hangs on your own actions. The fate of the world is in your hands. The key to this paradox lies within you, in the feeling you carry that each of your actions, even your personal, secret struggles, has cosmic significance. You will know then, as you know now, that everything you do matters.”

There were no more questions. The volunteers gathered in a circle, and the shaman went to each one. The last thing each was aware of was the shaman blowing smoke in his or her face. They entered a deep trance and dreamed themselves into the world where we find ourselves today.

 

 

Spoiler

Continuation of essay - A Gathering of the Tribe by Charles Eisenstein

****

Who are these missionaries from the more beautiful world? You and I are surely among them. Where else could this longing come from, for this magical place to be found nowhere on earth, this beautiful time outside of time? It comes from our intuitive knowledge of our origin and destination. The longing, indomitable, will never settle for a world that is less. Against all reason, we look upon the horrors of our age, mounting over the millennia, and we say NO, it does not have to be this way! We know it, because we have been there. We carry in our souls the knowledge that a more beautiful world is possible. Reason says it is impossible; reason says that even to slow — much less reverse — the degradation of the planet is an impossible task: politically unfeasible, opposed by the Money Power and its oligarchies. It is true that those powers will fight to uphold the world we have known. Their allies lurk within even ourselves: despair, cynicism, and resignation to carving out a life that is "good enough" for me and mine.

But we of the tribe know better. In the darkest despair a spark of hope lies inextinguishable within us, ready to be fanned into flames at the slightest turn of good news. However compelling the cynicism, a jejune idealism lives within us, always ready to believe, always ready to look upon new possibilities with fresh eyes, surviving despite infinite disappointments. And however resigned we may have felt, our aggrandizement of me and mine is half-hearted, for part of our energy is looking elsewhere, outward toward our true mission.

I would like to advise caution against dividing the world into two types of people, those who are of the tribe and those who are not. How often have you felt like an alien in a world of people who don't get it and don't care? The irony is that nearly everyone feels that way, deep down. When we are young the feeling of mission and the sense of magnificent origins and a magnificent destination is strong. Any career or way of life lived in betrayal of that knowing is painful, and can only be maintained through an inner struggle that shuts down a part of our being. For a time, we can keep ourselves functioning through various kinds of addictions or trivial pleasures to consume the life force and dull the pain. In earlier times, we might have kept the sense of mission and destiny buried for a lifetime, and called that condition maturity. Times are changing now though, as millions of people are awakening to their mission all at the same time. The condition of the planet is waking us up. Another way to put it, is that we are becoming young again.

When you feel that sense of alienation, when you look upon that sea of faces mired so inextricably in the old world and fighting to maintain it, think back to a time when you too were, to all outside appearances, a full and willing participant in that world as well. The same spark of revolution you carried then, the same secret refusal, dwells in all people. How was it that you finally stopped fighting it? How was it that you came to realize that you were right all along, that the world offered to us is wrong, and that no life is worth living that does not in some way strive to create a better one? How was it that it became intolerable to devote your life energy toward the perpetuation of the old world? Most likely, it happened when the old world fell apart around your ears.

As the multiple crises of money, health, energy, ecology, and more converge upon us, the world is going to collapse for millions more. We must stand ready to welcome them into the tribe. We must stand ready to welcome them back home.

The time of loneliness, of walking the path alone, of thinking maybe the world is right and I am wrong for refusing to participate fully in it… that time is over. For years we walked around talking about how wrong everything is: the political system, the educational system, religious institutions, the military-industrial complex, the banking industry, the medical system — really, any system you study deeply enough. We needed to talk about it because we needed to assure ourselves that we were not, in fact, crazy. We needed as well to talk about alternatives, the way things should be. "We" should eliminate CFCs. "They" should stop cutting down the rain forests. "The government" should declare no fishing zones. This talk, too, was necessary, for it validated our vision of the world that could be: a peaceful and exuberant humanity living in co-creative partnership with a wild garden earth.

The time, though, for talking merely to assure ourselves that we are right is coming to an end. People everywhere are tired of it, tired of attending yet another lecture, organizing yet another discussion group online. We want more. A few weeks ago as I was preparing for a speaking trip to Oregon, the organizers told me, "These people don't need to be told what the problems are. They don't even need to be told what the solutions are. They already know that, and many of them are already in action. What they want is to take their activism to the next level."

To do that, to fully step into one's mission here on earth, one must experience an inner shift that cannot be merely willed upon oneself. It does not normally happen through the gathering or receiving of information, but through various kinds of experiences that reach deep into our unconscious minds. Whenever I am blessed with such an experience, I get the sense that some benevolent yet pitiless power — the shaman in the story — has reached across the void to quicken me, to reorganize my DNA, to rewire my nervous system. I come away changed.

One way it happens is through the "gathering of the tribe" I described in this story. I think many people who attended the recent Reality Sandwich retreat in Utah experienced something like this. Such gatherings are happening now all over the world. You go back, perhaps, to "real life" afterwards, but it no longer seems so real. Your perceptions and priorities change. New possibilities emerge. Instead of feeling stuck in your routines, life changes around you at a vertiginous pace. The unthinkable becomes commonsense and the impossible becomes easy. It may not happen right away, but once the internal shift has occurred, it is inevitable.

Here I am, a speaker and a writer, going on about how the time for mere talk has ended. Yet not all words are mere talk. A spirit can ride the vehicle of words, a spirit that is larger than, yet not separate from, their meaning. Sometimes I find that when I bow into service, that spirit inhabits the space in which I speak and affects all present. A sacredness infuses our conversations and the non-verbal experiences that are becoming part of my events. In the absence of that sacredness, I feel like a smart-ass, up there entertaining people and telling them information they could just as easily read online. Last Friday night I spoke on a panel in New York, one of three smart-asses, and I think many in the audience left disappointed (though maybe not as disappointed as I was in myself). We are looking for something more, and it is finding us.

The revolutionary spark of our true mission has been fanned into flames before, only to return again to an ember. You may remember an acid trip in 1975, a Grateful Dead concert in 1982, a kundalini awakening in 1999 — an event that, in the midst of it, you knew was real, a privileged glimpse into a future that can actually manifest. Then later, as its reality faded into memory and the inertial routines of life consumed you, you perhaps dismissed it and all such experiences as an excursion from life, a mere "trip." But something in you knows it was real, realer than the routines of normalcy. Today, such experiences are accelerating in frequency even as "normal" falls apart. We are at the beginning of a new phase. Our gatherings are not a substitute for action; they are an initiation into a state of being from which the necessary kinds of actions arise. Soon you will say, with wonder and serenity, "I know what to do, and I trust myself to do it."

 

[vonkrankenhaus]

17 hours ago, Tryingtodobetter said:

My life has no value, no meaning, no purpose. I have no substantial savings, no transportation, no relationship, no true social circle, no home of my own, no semblance of true community- really nothing of worth using a societal metric or even using a "spiritual" one.

 

You didn't invent savings, transportation, relationships, society, circles, homes, community, metrics, or spirituality.

 

They are actually all the inventions of other people and groups, and all created to satisfy their own agendas.

 

So you have no inherent responsibility to these things.

 

No need to feel bad if you don't do them the way someone else intended, or at all.

 

Your life never had those limits, and doesn't now.

 

You are already free from all of it, and always have been.

 

Nobody has to die to realize this and move on from it.

 

Which way then to go?

 

You are free to see and go and do whatever is truly important and appropriate to you, as always. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

Edited July 13, 2019 by vonkrankenhaus

[Earl Grey]

Adding this for perspective in line with what some have already expressed. 

 

 

A movie about a suicide who wants to escape the pain. He finds he is in a place exactly as bad as where he tried to leave, only slightly worse.

 

He then wonders about how he's going to get out as the conditions are even more conducive to suicidal tendencies, but he hates to imagine where he might go next if it's already slightly worse.

 

My favorite scene regarding someone wanting sense talked into him when feeling suicidal. 

 

 

You'll find a way out. Try to find something worth enjoying and hold onto it. 

Edited July 13, 2019 by Earl Grey

[qofq]

Gone with the wind.

Edited July 18, 2019 by qofq

[Everything]

If you wanna know what it feels like to die, while being alive, the best way is to meditate, focus on something like a sight or sound or your breath, so that you leave behind thoughts of resistance, so you allow your true consciousness to flow more fully here and now, by letting go of thoughts of resistance, thoughts which are energetically in discordance with your greater more fuller more truer nature. The result is you feel better. Your true nature feels like bliss. And you are more clear. You feel more free, because that is what you always have been, and always will be. And it will never feel good to think a thought which runs counter/contrary/in discordance/resistant to/with your own greater non-physical consciousness of infinite and eternal being and ever becoming, always here and now. And so you always have acces to your very own greater non-physical energetic being of extremely high frequency pure positive energy, of infinite intelligence and eternal wisdom. Of your own greater non-physical consciousness of ever being and ever becoming. Always here and now. No need to die to allow that. But you do need to let go of thoughts and perspective which don't allow your physical being to realise that, and that can be done with a simple meditation.

 

Oh and you also need to be willing to feel joy or good feeling positive energy in motion / emotion. Not because that is your true nature, but because that good feeling positive emotion is simply an accurate indication of your physical being in alignment with your true being. That is how your body translates and feels the energetic allowed flow of communication between you and your greater non-physical consciousness, of infinite intelligence and eternal wisdom. 

Edited July 14, 2019 by Everything

[manitou]

I tend toward the depressive myself.  The best way to see my life as anything but a downward trajectory is when I can shut off the mind and be fully present in the Moment.  Start with where you're sitting.  Is there anything out of place immediately around you?  If so, straighten it up.  Make it look nice.  Then expand a bit.  Does the carpet need vacuuming? How are the windows?  For me, the trick is to do that anywhere, even if I'm somewhere else.  Pick up a piece of trash off the ground.  Just something, no matter how small, to do something for someone else, even if that someone is 'the world in general'.  It gets us out of ourselves.  This life is just a story we keep telling ourselves.

[rideforever]

Just make a plan for today.

Just for today.

Let go of tomorrow, of worrying about the world, or worrying about yourself.

Just make a plan for today.

If the morning goes well, the day will go well.

Work on small things.

[johndoe2012]

I have been suicidal for a long time due to feeling like a failure when compared to the success that I perceived others having.

 

I have healed that using Divine energy on all issues surrounding success, money, relationships plus listening to awakened teachers on YouTube that point to our True Nature.  Fred Davis have nice practices on Being and Paul Hedderman points to not-self so you can see the selfing process in action.

 

Also long walks in nature helps plus volunteering on causes that help others give something back that is not tangible but helps the spirit.

 

Hope you feel better soon.

[Hag]

If you really want to kill yourself, like it is your biggest dream, do it. Why shouldn't you ?

 

If you want to kill yourself because you feel helpless otherwise, tell yourself that whatever happens, death will come to you anyway sooner or later, so why force it ? Just do whatever you want meantime.

You can still kill yourself tomorrow.

 

(Some activities that I helped me go through bad times : spending some time in nature, away from civilization, drawing, listening or making music, walking hours without goal)

 

Edited July 15, 2019 by Hag
Clarity