And then to lose them into the seeming finality of death. I know very well the heavy ache of that lead weight in the heart. If you are open, however, the intensity of your anguish can be the door to freedom. When we are so strongly and exclusively identified with not only our physical and mental sensations, but what we imagine to be our bodies, it may seem so very hard to notice that in clinging to our views and stories about ourselves, the world, life, death, and the universe, we are clinging to hell itself. Hell is familiar terrain, predictable and fortified by the collective opinions of many others.
Misery loves company, but it is still hell, and it is still delusional.
But it doesn't work, so maybe we try to whitewash the wretchedness of conventional cynicism with some version of New Age or positive thinking technique or another. So, for many, some kind of resignation or even nihilism sets in. But the process of truth is much more demanding than that. It doesn't settle for the pretense of dualistic arguments, of positive vs. negative, optimism vs. pessimism, good vs. bad, nor the numbing effects of apathy. If we are truly interested in what we are and how it is , we can't assume anything .