at different times, your advise has helped me a lot. I'm hoping you'd have some wisdom to share with me this time. How do I deal with being a hypochondriac and fearing my own mortality? how do I not spiral and think to the very extreme and convince myself that I have abcd etc... I love life but I don't want to love it too much where it prevents me from being in the moment and worrying about an uncertain future. thank you for answering this!
Human life is a terminal condition. Whether we live a life of health and wellbeing or a life shortened by illness, a definitive end awaits us all.
This is certain regarding the human body and human mind.
Regardless of whether we experience a healthy body or a body that houses illness, we all experience the feeling "I exist."
This feeling does not come from the body or the mind. If you trace this feeling to its source, you will discover a reality you have never been separate from.
In nondual Buddhist philosophy, such as Dzogchen and Mahamudra, this is sometimes called Unborn Awareness. I had heard this term long ago but it never clicked for me until a shroom trip just after college.
The fundamental aspect of ourselves, the feeling of existence, was never born. It has never taken on any kind of form or sensation. In that sense it has no beginning and no ending. That which is without birth is also without death.
What we experience, every form and sensation, is ever-changing and impermanent. But that unborn awareness ever is.
Later on during my medical training, I learned how scientists and therapists were using psilocybin to guide patients with terminal diagnoses through the fear, suffering, and anxiety regarding their death. The results were profound and long-lasting. This made a great deal of sense to me given my own experience with psilocybin.
That being said, this is not me recommending you take psilocybin! That same day I had this profound shroom insight, my friend who had also taken shrooms was running around laughing and crying for no reason. I attribute my insight to the fact that I had been practicing daily meditation for years before trying psilocybin.
My point in bringing it up here is just to emphasize that you must go inward towards the source.
What you’re describing isn’t really about illness—it’s about the mind trying to create certainty in the face of uncertainty, and spiraling when it can’t. You’re not afraid of dying in those moments—you’re afraid of the thoughts and sensations that suggest you might be.
Even in the middle of fear, there is something in you that is simply aware of it. That awareness itself isn’t panicking.
When you feel yourself spiraling, don’t argue with the thoughts. Shift your attention to the raw sensation in the body—tightness, heat, pressure—and stay with it without labeling it. The spiral feeds on interpretation.
There is no switch to flip, only your own fears and neuroses to work through. Daily meditation practice will be the foundation that supports and advances your path.
I also recommend you read The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle and The Places That Scare You by Pema Chodron. Two very helpful texts.
I exercise six days a week and shepherd my health not because I expect to live forever but because I wish to live long enough to realize enlightenment in this life.
May you be free from fear and suffering; may you realize the peace of reality within you.
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