Do you Feel Burdened by Consciousness Itself?

Life - There's too much of it
Life – There’s too much of it

Sometimes I feel tired for no reason other than being aware. Being conscious of the world is enough to drain my energy and I need to sleep to recharge. In fact, I think my peaceful lifestyle is my way of structuring the outside world so that I don’t have to deal with “all of it” for too long. I know it exists and can deal with it intellectually. But I want to keep it at an arms length lest it overwhelms me. Anupa is often puzzled when after going out for a while I say I’m tired. “But you haven’t done anything! You’ve just sat in the car the whole way while I’ve been doing the driving!”. I tell her I need to recharge my batteries and this, I think, is the reason.

I’m just too aware of the world. So much so that I can only handle it from afar. Being put into the center of it drains my energy.

I envy the animals. Whenever I see our dog just lying there on the bed, I wonder about all the terrible stuff in the world that she has no idea about. But it’s not just the bad stuff. There’s awesomeness and magnificence in the world that she can’t comprehend either. The fact that she’ll die one day. That the tiny lizard she just killed is a life form of its own that was probably born just a few days ago. That the sun will burn out billions of years from now and we could all be destroyed by an asteroid. She doesn’t know of the cosmos, the possible multiple universes. She doesn’t know that before her, our house resounded with the noise of three dogs running around and chasing each other. She’s oblivious to the past, and the future. She lives only in the present.

Man on the other hand, can’t avoid being aware of both. We know we’re going to die one day. “So what” is the not the point. The fact is that we know. And that’s just another thing we have to deal with. We live in the future as much as in the present. Some of us live in the past. We look back at our ancestors, trace family lineages, lovingly pore over photographs, and remember times when things were different. The burden of consciousness itself, of life itself is a terrifying one.

It’s a paradox really. On the one hand I’m harrowed at the thought of death and the fact that everything I know and love will burn out. At the same time, I can’t fully handle my own world that I live in. I have to structure it and filter it out through barriers that I myself erect developing a routing, structuring my life, and keeping my room neat and tidy. These are ways I keep everything from spiraling out of control. Because there’s just too much life happening everywhere, and I can’t face it.

If you think you don’t have this issue, consider this. Everywhere you go in India you stare poverty and hardship in the face. Do you allow yourself to feel the pain of every hungry dog and every miserable beggar you encounter? If you’re accustomed to India you know that’s not an option. You’ll be driven mad by the massive wall of torment hitting you in your gut as you absorb the cries and distress of millions of souls. Do you worry about every ant you step on, every mosquito you kill? Those of us who eat meat – do we agonize over the plight of animals being tortured for our meat?

We can try and do some good, work at a charity, or even dedicate our entire lives to helping others like Mother Teresa. But it’s never enough – it cannot be enough. There is a safety switch. A fuse that burns out when overloaded. For our own sanity, we need to block out the world.

Being too aware is a problem I face when I have little else to do. Occupations distract me and keep me from realizing the awful magnificence and terror of the universe. Boy, am I messed up or what?

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15 thoughts on “Do you Feel Burdened by Consciousness Itself?”

  1. Just letting you know, you aren’t the only one. I understand perfectly what you are saying. Here are some things I tell and do with myself to get through the overwhelming energy zones of awareness in my life

    1. I can only do as much as my heart, time, finances and responsibility to the people in my life will allow me to do.
    2. This will pass too.
    3. Find ways to be happy so that you can spread that joy in the same way as their sadness and misery spreads.
    4. Know that Everyone does their best in their situation, so appreciate their getting through that situation.
    5. I am thankful for my awareness, it helps me see others with more compassion and empathy which in turn helps the people I am around.
    6. I take a shower after I return from a high energy zone or sleep early every time I feel overwhelmed to that point of immobility. If I cant do either because of time and space I am in, I use the Restroom or find a people-less corner to deep breathe.
    7. Distract myself with books that are joyful to read(comedy) or shows that are laugh worthy.

    As for dying, I figured its not worth the worry. I accept the fact that we are just blimps in time that serve whatever the need of that time is even when we don’t understand it.

    On eating the dead animals, stepping on ants etc.. I have created the illusion that their death just like my death is serving the conservation of energy within our universe…for things to move through evolution there has to be movement of energy. Stagnant energy, or energy in passive state, creates and transforms nothing.

    While what I said above may not solve your problem, it will still serve as options you can try as filters for your awareness.

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    • In reply to Mysoul

      I admit that subscribing to a philosophy where everything serves a purpose (like you referring to movement and energy) is incredibly comforting. For that matter, I wished I believed in a god. It would surely make things easier!

      My point is merely that life is a paradox. We try and avoid death on an ongoing basis, but at the same time cannot comprehend the immensity of life. Both are painful. Like being caught between two unpleasant outcomes.

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      • In reply to bhagwad

        I found believing in a God the way we are taught to believe in god is not really comforting. It involves a lot of fear, begging, rituals that are inconsequential, dogma that makes absolutely no sense to my awareness and thinking yourself as incapable…So I found myself a God that isn’t like that, its exactly the kind I need. My God is not demanding but a Fantastic Companion in my life. So my advice to you, you don’t have to believe in a God, Be what you need to be in every moment, Do the best you can every moment, and the rest is beyond your control so let it go.

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      • In reply to Mysoul

        The thing is, I doubt if there’s any solution or “advice” that one can give in this matter. I view it as a fundamental problem of the human condition that has to be suffered through. For me I find the usual type of advice I get from others like “just be in the present” etc pretty insufficient. I’ve been hearing this for years now – it’s basically what so many religions tell us. How can I miss it? They’re not telling me something I don’t know.

        But it’s not enough for me. Being in the “present” is exactly what I find exhausting.

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      • In reply to Mysoul

        This is a good response…
        ” Be what you need to be in every moment, Do the best you can every moment, and the rest is beyond your control so let it go.”

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      • In reply to tp

        Like I mentioned above, it’s not advice that I want. I’m just commenting on a fundamental aspect of the human experience. I’ve heard all this “advice” before for the past 15 years! Tried it and moved beyond it because these are basic contradictions for which no solution exists. At best we can try out different ways of coping, but there is no perfect solution to the problem.

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  2. Yes, Life is a Paradox. I think that’s what the religious texts of yore were trying to explain and instead of understanding that fact, we made religions out of them.

    I think being caught between two unpleasant outcomes is the best place to be…cause we will try our damndest to live life the best we can in our present.

    I cant see how we can avoid death on an ongoing basis, when every nanosecond cells in some part of me are dying and every minute I realize that I am living in the past cause by the time I perceive something, its the light of at least few seconds past. But I assume my past to be my present. Which means, in a round about way I am living when I am dead(if that makes sense). So I have stopped trying to avoid death, instead I try to avoid getting maimed or disabled while I am presuming myself as alive ;).

    Comprehending the immensity of life can be done via meditation….cause we all get to that point in meditation(when we are really able to be focused on particular areas of awareness of senses) where we can see that to say we are a speck in the universe is an understatement.

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    • In reply to Mysoul

      Well, we avoid death everytime we cross the road carefully. That’s what I mean by avoiding death on an ongoing basis. It’s a biological imperative that there’s no escape from. We naturally feel wary around high places, we puke up food that doesn’t agree with us…our bodies essentially force us to live on for as long as we can – all the while being a losing battle.

      As far as comprehending the immensity of the universe…that’s precisely the problem! I can do it even without meditation, but it’s exhausting and not an experience I want to replicate on a continuous basis. Hence the active running away and shutting out of life’s full experience.

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    • In reply to Mysoul

      To go with your first paragraph, there is evidence that the Gnostics were responsible for the earliest texts and deepest interpretations of bibilical erm bibilography, and exegesis. While they didn’t mind sheep being herded on faith to derive literal, exoteric meanings, they used various symbols to guide the initiated to the esoteric inner teachings. One of these signs would be unnecessary errors or divergences in different tellings of the same stories (like the gospels) or patently illogical claims in a questionable story that is ambiguous about its historicity. Anyone who accepted these defects and the accompanying hand-waving wasn’t fit to be initiated anyways. While some religions did indeed admit life’s absurdity, many more religions would admit *their own* absurdity, would but the choirmembers and laypeople know. However, I can’t go along with your charitable lensing of history. These texts are often out to enslave us mentally, and line out a whole life plan for us to be worth anything in the long run. How much ambiguity does islam treat life with?

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  3. I don’t see a causative, line between antinatalism and suicide anymore, (neither life nor death are worth getting excited enough about to birth others or death yourself) despite the bleak take on life. I have wondered if antinatalism as a philosophy leads inexorably to omnicidalism, just out of pity for all this genetic machinery held in thrall to the march of the selfish gene, marching to its own drumbeat, and when it pops a drumhead? It makes another! This burden of living in 3 dimensions of time, which since it’s an abstraction in fits neatly into our heads (ok, maybe not so neatly, but as well as nebulous things as gravity and energy which we have used to grow our understanding of firmer concepts) spins human existence on a different course from your darling of a dog, since we overcome the limitations of 3d space where we have to lug this whole apparatus around to move ‘backward’ and ‘forward’ (and indeed cherish the ability, while it’s still there, between the rack and the gallows….). But don’t the limitations of space ‘ground’ us? The fact that there are infinities that are meaningful to consider due to what they say about our origins and destination means that the sphere where we overcome is the sphere where we are overwhelmed.

    Think about the fact that division of labor as a social phenomenon has grown parabolically for the past 10k years. We are now knee deep in the process of making a better organism. With all the time and resources at Her disposal, Mother Nature surely could have done better than us, let alone our technical achievements under suboptimal conditions. That is, if she cared to. But THAT is just it, we live in a deaf and indifferent universe that is deaf and indifferent to sensitive, biased beings and does not cater for their preferences AT ALL.A meaningless universe that randomly yet predictably intervenes in your attempts to create meaning. We are peons. Life is a fluke, consciousness a mistake and death is the preferred state to ride out the next trillion years of this silly universe. Not that we vote or anything.

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  4. You are definitely not alone, I live in Australia and was brought up with an alternative way of living and have moved around a lot, I have a keen awareness of events and the happenings of my continent and other countries and although it enables me to make beneficial life choices for self and my family, I do often wish I were a bird or some kind of animal as you mention, this is the ultimate burden in my eyes, to be trully counciously aware, thanks I enjoyed reading this post and others opinions on the matter

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  5. We’re all pretentious pieces of shit if we don’t think other people taste this cruel agony. They’ve just smartly nipped it in the bud by pursuing long-term goals with immediate lures and rewards. We can’t know what happens after death, and death could beget more existence with the need to relearn everything we’ve already been privy to and despised, so we might as well work towards obtaining immortality through robotics and becoming cyborgs. We need to learn how to transfer our consciousness to a new ‘brain’ without replicating the part of the brain responsible for consciousness, which might create a new consciousness, which would in turn make us trapped in the cycle of rebirth that we might already be experiencing.

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  6. I’m tired too.
    Sometimes, all I can do is stare while I lie in bed, imagining myself wrapped in a warm dark ocean. Other times, it’s just a field of flowers. Dramatic, I know. It’s my way to cope with it. But, it feels better than to face everything at the moment, so I don’t. For a few minutes, I could pretend that I don’t have to do anything and that I don’t have to think about it. And that space, for me, is precious. So I protect it, in order to live normally. It’s another long day ahead, and the least I can do was give myself that… even if it was just for 5 mins.

    I searched up “Tired of being aware” on google and I found your post today. It helped make me feel like I wasn’t alone, so thank you, even if that may not be your intention. Maybe, you’ve changed your mind since this was a post from so long ago.

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