Fear of letting go?

[Brian37]

I fear death too, but I don't fear not existing. I also was not around 4 billion years ago.

You don't need a fictional forever to be motivated to live. Think about mundane things in your life you do that also you know end.

You go to a movie knowing it ends, but you still go and enjoy it. You go to a music concert knowing it plays a last song, but you still go and enjoy it. You go to a sporting event knowing one team will win, one will lose, and you still go and enjoy it. You read a good book knowing it has a last page, but you still read it. You get a pet cat or pet dog, you enjoy them, but you live longer, and even after they die, you might get another one and enjoy that one too.

Saying that life ends does not have to make you depressed nor is it fatalistic or pessimistic to accept that reality. What you have now is important, and life while you are alive is what you make it, not what others say you have to believe or do.

You can still feel love, you will still have some pain, but you wont be tortured for eternity by anything.

I fear prolonged pain, I fear my loved ones missing me. But again, I have no fear of fictional punishment anymore than I fear life before I was born.

I still see lots of good in life. I still have family and friends I love. I simply do not assign anything good or bad that might happen in life to old mythology.

True, good points

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Go look up all the histories of hell, and then you will realize that they are the products of ignorant, fevered imaginations. That'll help you deprogram yourself from that fear.

Iv'e not looked up the history's of hell or the bible because i'd rather waste my day reading psychology or something useful even though it wouldn't harm me to look into it 
I've watched a lot of things and i'm not sure the fear of hell is my biggest concern anymore or that it'll be solved because i think it's a very irrational fear?

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Why do you feel compelled to let those beliefs go? Why is it important to you?

I want to understand psychology and our minds and i can't understand how our minds fully work if i'm also not willing to let go 
also even if i end up wrong, does it matter? what matters is i remained open minded. Hopefully. 
I can't help others if i can't learn to help myself that's what motivates me i also almost died not long ago in a really stupid way, but stupid or not its made me reflect on what's important, on what's the "here and now" instead of the "What could be" i always have reflected on this but iv'e been doing it more.

It isn't as complicated as one might think.

1. Humans worldwide in antiquity had no clue how things worked, like we do today.

2. That scientific ignorance back then made humans fearful, so we made up answers as a way to cope. 

3. Our species does better when we group and socialize. But a group can be successful and dead wrong about the beliefs that group centers it's society around. For 3,000 years the ancient Egyptians were successful and believed that Ra controlled the sun, and Osiris and Isis and Horus were real gods. But they were not real one bit.

You do not need a god belief or a religion to value now. And death, while scary is normal, because it is the same fear that makes us look both ways before crossing a busy street, is a fact of reality. So you can fear the unavoidable needlessly, or live your life now without fear of things you cannot change.

[vulcanlogician]

Why do you feel compelled to let those beliefs go? Why is it important to you?

I want to understand psychology and our minds and i can't understand how our minds fully work if i'm also not willing to let go 

Why don't you simply learn the science of the brain and study different psychological theories without first letting go of your beliefs? After you have educated yourself and gotten a solid scientific understanding of how the mind works, any erroneous beliefs you have will simply "show themselves out" so to speak. There is no reason to do everything at once, y'know. You don't have to force religion out of your mind before you're able to learn science.

[Aegon]

Why do you feel compelled to let those beliefs go? Why is it important to you?

I want to understand psychology and our minds and i can't understand how our minds fully work if i'm also not willing to let go 
also even if i end up wrong, does it matter? what matters is i remained open minded. Hopefully. 
I can't help others if i can't learn to help myself that's what motivates me i also almost died not long ago in a really stupid way, but stupid or not its made me reflect on what's important, on what's the "here and now" instead of the "What could be" i always have reflected on this but iv'e been doing it more.

I'm no psychologist but I don't think you can force a belief to go away, or force yourself into a belief you don't legitimately have. You have to organically convince yourself of something. If you still believe in the supernatural, it's because you legitimately think that it is true... even if you don't think you do. Instead of focusing on letting go of belief, maintain it while you conduct research on things that contradict those beliefs, and eventually you will naturally come to the conclusion that your prior beliefs were most likely false, which will then provide you a new set of beliefs that you have true faith in. I think researching the mind will cause the letting go, not the other way around. Or perhaps it won't, but it's nothing to feel bad about.

A near-death experience will certainly wake you up to reality, as well as the immense breadth of the world in which we live. Use that to your advantage. Memento mori, friend.

[Brian37]

I want to understand psychology and our minds and i can't understand how our minds fully work if i'm also not willing to let go 

Why don't you simply learn the science of the brain and study different psychological theories without first letting go of your beliefs? After you have educated yourself and gotten a solid scientific understanding of how the mind works, any erroneous beliefs you have will simply "show themselves out" so to speak. There is no reason to do everything at once, y'know. You don't have to force religion out of your mind before you're able to learn science.

I wouldn't say it is a process of "forcing" anything out of one's mind in as much as being open to the fact you don't need it.

Nobody forced me to ditch my religion. And I didn't force it out of my own mind. I simply questioned it over years and the more I did, the less it made sense. I finally could not logically defend my former position.

[brewer]

Hello TJ.

Fear of death is natural, most people, if honest, admit to fearing death in some fashion. And believing in the existence of "supernatural entities" is tied to death. If you fear death to the point of distraction and it's negatively impacting your life, seek out some real life help.

As for brain/mind/psychology, give Sapolsky a whirl: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_q...ky+lecture

[SlowCalculations]

How long have you been an atheist? It can be hard to let go of all your feelers at once, mine just kind of faded away on their own. It's hard to imagine now why they ever worried me.

Sense i was seven? 
even though i didn't know the word for atheist i sorta just always new the story's where bull?
Some could say around 12? at least that's when i started noticing i thought differently and why. 
people keep mentioning force  i don't really feel like i'm forcing myself out of anything?

---

Why don't you simply learn the science of the brain and study different psychological theories without first letting go of your beliefs? After you have educated yourself and gotten a solid scientific understanding of how the mind works, any erroneous beliefs you have will simply "show themselves out" so to speak. There is no reason to do everything at once, y'know. You don't have to force religion out of your mind before you're able to learn science.

I wouldn't say it is a process of "forcing" anything out of one's mind in as much as being open to the fact you don't need it.

Nobody forced me to ditch my religion. And I didn't force it out of my own mind. I simply questioned it over years and the more I did, the less it made sense. I finally could not logically defend my former position.

to be honest i wrote this not thinking great, i'm not sure how to answer some of the questions in the best ways. I don't feel i'm forcing anything, maybe the supernatural side yes i probably feel confused about that and a little embarrassed but that's all complicated and i'm not fully willing to discuss it publicly yet. Not believing in a god is something that's just never been in existence for me i new at seven there wasn't a god.

---

I want to understand psychology and our minds and i can't understand how our minds fully work if i'm also not willing to let go 

Why don't you simply learn the science of the brain and study different psychological theories without first letting go of your beliefs? After you have educated yourself and gotten a solid scientific understanding of how the mind works, any erroneous beliefs you have will simply "show themselves out" so to speak. There is no reason to do everything at once, y'know. You don't have to force religion out of your mind before you're able to learn science.

Yea, that's what iv'e been doing, or trying. well, not everything somethings iv'e studied the brain a little psychology courses online ect.

[Simon Moon]

Go look up all the histories of hell, and then you will realize that they are the products of ignorant, fevered imaginations. That'll help you deprogram yourself from that fear.

Iv'e not looked up the history's of hell or the bible because i'd rather waste my day reading psychology or something useful even though it wouldn't harm me to look into it 
I've watched a lot of things and i'm not sure the fear of hell is my biggest concern anymore or that it'll be solved because i think it's a very irrational fear?

I believe one of the points Fireball is getting at, is that almost no image of hell that modern Christians have is Biblical. Almost every image and description of hell the vast majority of Christians have are take from the books, "Paradise Lost" by Milton and Dante's "Inferno".

The one question I could ask you about your fear of the Christians hell is, while you were a Christian, how much time did you spend in fear of the hells of other religions? After all, the description of Jahannam in the Koran is quite a bit worse than any Biblical description of the Christian hell.

[Jehanne]

Hello, I've been looking for a place to discuss my thoughts again I've never gone to church's as an adult or anything i'm not devoted to anything i basically told everyone i didn't believe as a child and as a teenager. But for a while iv'e had a fear of "Hell" that's always succeeded to scare the crap out of me even though this has been rehashed and debunked over and over again but iv'e not had that problem for a while because i'm not focused on it and i believe it's just some kind of mental thing i have to learn to get over it. What iv'e recently been struggling with is actually entirely different i'm getting to the point where i want to let go of the idea of "Spirituality" as in the supernatural and that's something i'd never thought i'd find myself admitting or saying. I realize this is silly but i'm scared of letting go and there being "Nothing" if that makes sense? any advice or help with this fear would be great. 
Iv'e been trying to convince myself that nothings not the end but it sorta is, and isn't....i don't want to see myself as dust to be honest....i'm supposed to be comforted by this yet i'm not. I'm more angry i can't get over this as quickly as i'd prefer because i feel it's been long enough and i'm going in a repeated cycle brake out of the fear of hell? jump into the fear of letting go and realizing the end is truly the end that should be motivating right?  Now i'm rambling and i'll let people reply or not reply.
(I'm sorry for my bad grammar and spelling)

When I was growing-up, I used to have night terrors, beginning around age 13, of dying and going to eternal Hell.  I remember some of the nightmares, but none of the terrors, which my mother, repeatedly, told me that I suffered through.

But, yes, what happens if Islam is the "one true religion", and you end-up in some Muslim Hell?  How about if you are a Shia versus Sunni Muslim?

[SlowCalculations]

How long have you been an atheist? It can be hard to let go of all your feelers at once, mine just kind of faded away on their own. It's hard to imagine now why they ever worried me.

Sense i was seven? 
even though i didn't know the word for atheist i sorta just always new the story's where bull?
Some could say around 12? at least that's when i started noticing i thought differently and why. 
people keep mentioning force  i don't really feel like i'm forcing myself out of anything?

---

I wouldn't say it is a process of "forcing" anything out of one's mind in as much as being open to the fact you don't need it.

Nobody forced me to ditch my religion. And I didn't force it out of my own mind. I simply questioned it over years and the more I did, the less it made sense. I finally could not logically defend my former position.

to be honest i wrote this not thinking great, i'm not sure how to answer some of the questions in the best ways. I don't feel i'm forcing anything, maybe the supernatural side yes i probably feel confused about that and a little embarrassed but that's all complicated and i'm not fully willing to discuss it publicly yet. Not believing in a god is something that's just never been in existence for me i new at seven there wasn't a god.

---

Why don't you simply learn the science of the brain and study different psychological theories without first letting go of your beliefs? After you have educated yourself and gotten a solid scientific understanding of how the mind works, any erroneous beliefs you have will simply "show themselves out" so to speak. There is no reason to do everything at once, y'know. You don't have to force religion out of your mind before you're able to learn science.

Yea, that's what iv'e been doing, or trying. well, not everything somethings iv'e studied the brain a little psychology courses online ect.

I don't want to discuss hell? Sorry if iv'e confused people.  
I kind of just not really cared/given up on that entire thing, or at least it's not as big of a issue right now then the other parts.
To be nice though and answer anyways: None of those arguments have worked for me because it's purely illogical fear, hence why i gave up on trying to brake it it is what it is and eventually it'll fade on its own.