that won't work:
Nihilism, pointlessness, meaninglessness, anomie, ennui, boredom, ghastly hopelessness or ghastly desperation, just waiting to die, can show up anytime. There are many versions and flavors and they can have different underlying structure and causes.
There's maybe a particular late-stage flavor, as, at deeper and deeper "levels," a person realizes that X, Y, and Z "just won't work," where "working" is perhaps something vaguely like stable and final access to safety, love, sex outside of death, decay, dissolution, neurodegeneration or time... And X, Y, and Z are plans and goals and reliances and religiousity and faith and fantasies and fulfillment of sexual fetishes and...
That's not to say with certainty and finality that, I don't know, immortality or souls or god or god tech aren't things---I mean they're probably not, but nothing is certain and all is empty and provisional (including all being empty and provisional). But likely you wan to rely on something, but you can't---don't take my word for it, of course; your experience might be different!
In any case, there's this subtler and subtler (sometimes very overt) sorting and sifting, "what about this," "what about that," "oh shit that won't work," "what about this?" And so on.
So there's sort of this increasing desperation or gallows-something, likely at this point arising in considerable equanimity or at least forebearance (otherwise it sort of wouldn't be safe for a lot of this to come up).
And, but, anyway, this is also sort of, at the same time, with a bit of a lag, untangling deeper and deeper dimensions or aspects of or in the rough bucket of "no-self" type stuff, "conception of stable durational identity" type stuff.
And then... [sic] (I'm still exploring how to write this last part.)
It's very connected to the below, taken from another section:
at least one sense in which "you" and "suffering" are "on the same side", like, you've been holding the "suffering control panel" all along, and there's a way to get access or authorization that's not suppression, not layering or papering over, there's just "pressing the off button, simple as [sic]" (realizing that "same side", and getting access, which is more like realizing you had it all along, that authorization, realization process is in part that whole-bodymind-complete, whole-meditation-complete, global wayfinding puzzle, involving self-compassion, self-alignment, self-kindness, self-wisdom, and is also intimately related to groundlessness). There are deeper and deeper and deeper layers of this.
(via:)
touchstones sort of leaving out or only weakly interacting with "wisdom" and morality ("at least one sense in which")
https://meditationbook.page/#158da1b
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---don't take my word for it, of course; your experience might be different!
and also, worth repeating, it's ok to want to live forever, to fantasize about it, to want to be rich, invincible, young forever, powerful, safe in very specific ways, etc.
there will be conceptual and metaphysical confusions there, but that's what redo-to-undo and fantasy, and trying things out, and trying to get things, will help with. and lots and lots of it will not be conceptual and metaphysical confusions; it will just be good and nourishing and so on.
so "that won't work" isn't prescriptive. enjoy thinking about what you want (to work) and sometimes try to make it work(!), all the way down, for everything, as you are so moved, or not. that's how one gets fulfilling relationships, and that's how we got science and medicine and computers, at the very least, and who knows what's next...
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See also: