Void Attack

[qos]

Last night I had the first "Void attack" that I've suffered in a very long time.

I had been communing with LM and thinking about the future with him -- a very long future as spirits -- and suddenly my brain tripped over into trying to grasp exactly what "forever" meant.

To be without ending is incomprehensible, and last night it was utterly terrifying. However contemplating an ultimate end -- not just of us, but of the universe itself -- was equally incomprehensible and terrifying.

During the height of my existential crisis (more than twenty years ago), thoughts like these would keep me awake every night for hours. The pain and fear were so great that I literally wished I had never been born, so I would not have to face either of these eventualities. To have the existential angst return so unexpectedly and with such power was shocking. Despite the fact that I do have a vital, living faith right now, I had no defense against the terror that these extremes elicited in me.

Finally I managed to latch on to my belief that the human psyche is simply not equipped to comprehend such vastness, and that I have absolutely no way to understand the possibilities and potentials of existence on that scale. It was useless to try to think my way out of my fear. Better to just release it as a side-effect of the limits of my own mind, rather than give it more energy as I worried about something I can neither understand nor change.

When I broke out of the terror, my brain felt different. The closest thing I can compare it to is the equivalent of an adrenaline rush elsewhere. It felt like something had shifted in a more than abstract way.

I really, really do not want to have to go back into that mindspace any time soon.
Or ever again, to be ruthlessly honest.

Comments

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

*hug

Thanks.