If Death Is Imaginary, Is Memento Mori Bullshit?

[r0ckyreed]

If death is imaginary, is memento mori bullshit?

Argument for Immortality:

1. If the present moment is eternal, then I am immortal and death is imaginary.

2. The present moment is all there is. Death is a concept projected onto existence.

3. Therefore, I am immortal and death is imaginary.

If I am immortal, what purpose does the practice of memento mori serve? My answer is that it helps me live to my full potential and execute on my life purpose. But I guess memento mori is a useful falsehood for the ego.

What are your thoughts?

[hyruga]

Momento Mori is referring to physical bodily death.

[Leo Gura]

It's relative to within the dream.

[r0ckyreed]

15 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It's relative to within the dream.

I have watched your videos on death and memento mori. Is this a practice that you still do or find value in doing even after you have deconstructed death?

[Leo Gura]

@r0ckyreed I do an opposite practice where I remind myself that death isn't real and that I am forver.

[Hello from Russia]

40 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@r0ckyreed I do an opposite practice where I remind myself that death isn't real and that I am forver.

@Leo Gura What to do if you're stuck somewhere in the middle where you are not conscious of death being unreal, yet still can't take it seriously? Lol

[r0ckyreed]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

@r0ckyreed I do an opposite practice where I remind myself that death isn't real and that I am forver.

Interesting. That is why I asked the question on whether memento mori is full of crap.
 

However, Memento mori helps me focus on what is important and to not waste time. 
 

The other practice you do could be an example of truth vs. utility. 

Mortality seems to give life meaning. Immortality and meaninglessness go together, it seems.

I will try the opposite memento mori after I have fully deconstructed mortality. I feel like memento mori can be a trap that prevents one from deconstructing mortality.

[Michal__]

7 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

 

I will try the opposite memento mori after I have fully deconstructed mortality. I feel like memento mori can be a trap that prevents one from deconstructing mortality.

That's a good idea but I highly doubt memento mori would be a trap in anyway. The end of your current life has nothing to do with immortality.

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Hello from Russia said:

@Leo Gura What to do if you're stuck somewhere in the middle where you are not conscious of death being unreal, yet still can't take it seriously? Lol

You take death very seriously. Stop kidding yourself.

[Seeker_of_truth]

On 3/10/2022 at 11:58 PM, r0ckyreed said:

I will try the opposite memento mori after I have fully deconstructed mortality. I feel like memento mori can be a trap that prevents one from deconstructing mortality.

You seem to indicate that mortality is some huge thing that you have to work hard to deconstruct. All I had was one small realization and I feel like I've already understood death (at least the fact that I'm not affected by death of the body/mind). Once I realized that I am the awareness to which everything appears (I am the subject to which all objects appear), it is apparent that this awareness never changes or is affected in any way. Death was a belief. This body and mind may die, but death is just another thing that appears to awareness. Do I lose my sense of seeing when I close my eyes? When I close my eyes what ceases is the objects that I used to see. I think of death in a similar way.

I don't see how a fact about the death of the body can affect realizing that you are awareness and seeing that you cannot be affected.

Your arguments for immortality is like you are trying to prove some math formula. Immortality is in your direct experience, mortality is a belief caused by societal conditioning and false identification with the body/mind.

[r0ckyreed]

@Seeker_of_truth  Thanks for your response.

6 hours ago, Seeker_of_truth said:

You seem to indicate that mortality is some huge thing that you have to work hard to deconstruct.

Aint it though?  Mortality to me is like the ultimate boss fight on your hero's journey.  All fear stems from the idea of mortality.  Immortality is the holy grail I am trying to find.

 

6 hours ago, Seeker_of_truth said:

All I had was one small realization and I feel like I've already understood death (at least the fact that I'm not affected by death of the body/mind). Once I realized that I am the awareness to which everything appears (I am the subject to which all objects appear), it is apparent that this awareness never changes or is affected in any way. Death was a belief.

To me, there is a difference between having a realization that death is a belief and actually deconstructing death.  I am pretty sure that most people on here who claim to have deconstructed death are fooling themselves.  You are still very attached to living and still fear death.

 

6 hours ago, Seeker_of_truth said:

This body and mind may die, but death is just another thing that appears to awareness.

How can you tell whether something is dead or alive?  What does death look like?  Where do you actually see death?  

6 hours ago, Seeker_of_truth said:

 Do I lose my sense of seeing when I close my eyes? When I close my eyes what ceases is the objects that I used to see. I think of death in a similar way.

I don't see how a fact about the death of the body can affect realizing that you are awareness and seeing that you cannot be affected.

Your arguments for immortality is like you are trying to prove some math formula. Immortality is in your direct experience, mortality is a belief caused by societal conditioning and false identification with the body/mind.

Good questions/observations.  

To remain dreaming/living, death has to affect your realizations; otherwise, you would stop dreaming.

I agree.  I present a logical argument for immortality so I can walk you through my thought processes on how I come to the conclusion that death is imaginary.  I believe evidence, even though it is relative, is still important for every claim.  That way, I can communicate and other people can follow my derivations and conclusions.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here is a tangent of my personal contemplations on dead/alive that I contemplated last night to help me deconstruct death (My contemplations here are probably all full of crap but I guess I have to start somewhere):

What determines whether an object has life in it?  Movement?  If we say that movement is what determines whether something has life, then we could say that the wind is alive or the trees moving are alive.  Most people would agree that trees are alive, meaning that they are living creatures. But most would not agree that the wind is alive or that soil is alive, but yet, all living things' survival are dependent on what we classify as dead things.  Is food alive?  Maybe.  It depends on my construction.  There are degrees of aliveness.  A person in a comma or in locked-in syndrome could be viewed as half-dead/half-alive. Is death when we no longer feel important or lose our meaning?  To me, death is impermanence.  Death is change.  But all distinctions of living and death are mental constructions of the mind.  Aliveness also implies that something has a mind.  A person in locked-in syndrome, a person sleeping, or a person whose heart has stopped could be considered as living, dead, or at least capable of life and potential because their mind is assumed to exist.  How can you know if something is alive or dead?  A dead cat and an alive cat are the same in direct experience.  They are your direct experience.  The only difference is the mind constructs aliveness and deadness.  I mean, you could imagine your cat being alive but never moving or breathing.  What would be the difference between the two?  Any difference I can think of is arbitrary.  Do other people really die?  No.  In my direct experience, I have never seen death, only my direct experience.  Dead and alive are concepts and stories projected onto reality.  Do other people die in my dreams at night?  I imagine that they do.  Where do the dead people in my dreams go?  Where do my dreams go when I wake up?  They are still inside me, behind my eyes, so to speak.  There is no head or eyes, only the World or Field of Consciousness that everything occurs in.  

What about sleeping, dreaming, and death?  Sleeping could be viewed as a form of death or another part of life.  Again, it is relative to how I am constructing and drawing these lines.  What if I am dead already?  Have I seriously considered that?  Assume I died.  How would I know that death occurred?  When I go to sleep, how do I know that sleep occurred?  Do I discover when I wake up again?  In a lucid dream?  Yes.  So how do I wake up?  How do I become lucid?  What is the "mechanism" that allows me to wake up instead of eternally remaining asleep forever?  It appears that sleep, dreaming, and waking up just happen without my will.  Would dreamless sleeping forever be similar to death?  How would I know the difference if I am not there?  I have no memory of any past life in the same way that sometimes I have no memory of my dreams when I wake up.  Past lives like my dreams are mentally constructed right now in the same way that I construct the past, present, and future.  Another way to look at it is that death is where I come from.  Before being born, I was nothing.  After I die, I go back to the same place from which I was born.  How did I first become born or wake up into the world for the first time from the Deep Sleep of Death?  

This is all a nice story.  But it is still a story.  How do I know I came from death and how do I know I will go to death?  Where the hell did I get the idea of death from?  Culture and society and family.  Death is a story on the news and in my life.  I feel like I am crazy, but the only thing I have is direct experience.  What difference is there between a toy/puppet, a tree branch, a snake, and a human?  They are all Self.  They are all Direct Experience.  Where is the aliveness or essence of a toy, tree branch, snake, or human?  In my mind.  Where is the essence or aliveness of my mind?  In my mind.  There is nothing outside of my mind because all that I classify as other or beyond my mind is actually a mental construction of that which is my mind.  Why do I still fear death?  Because I am attached to this dream.  I love the world and human character that I have constructed.  What is beyond this dream, this life?  Nothing is beyond.  There is an assumption of a future of something beyond.  But I will wake up right and this life will end right?  I am still constructing that something will happen.  The only thing happening is Now.  There is nowhere to go.  Location is another mental construction.  There is nowhere to go because I am already there!  Every dream I have is nowhere that appears to be somewhere.  How is this life any different from a dream?  How do I deconstruct death and all my fears?  By learning to let go and become completely non-attached to this dream through more contemplation and meditation on these matters.  

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thanks!  Keep growing and stay wise!  

Edited March 12, 2022 by r0ckyreed