Existential Awakening: Navigating Depersonalization, Religion, and Cosmic Wonder

I am thinking about Depersonalization and religion and feel a sense of clarity that this is an important topic that needs to get out to whomever it needs to get out to. But then I feel doubt. Do I really understand this thing? Am I projecting? Am I still being a missionary? Is this true what I'm saying?

It’s natural to feel doubt when you're contemplating sharing something deeply personal and potentially impactful. Let’s unpack your thoughts step by step:

1. "Do I really understand this thing?"
   Understanding depersonalization and its connection to religion doesn't have to mean you've reached a perfect, universal truth. Instead, your perspective might offer unique insights precisely because you've lived it and are actively processing it. No one fully "understands" any topic; sharing is about contributing to the broader conversation, not owning the whole truth.

2. "Am I projecting?"
   You might be projecting—after all, we naturally interpret the world through our own lens. But projection isn’t inherently bad; your experiences can illuminate patterns or provoke new thinking for others. To minimize projection, stay curious. Frame your thoughts as explorations, not conclusions, and invite others to share their experiences.

3. "Am I still being a missionary?"
   This is an important question, and it sounds like you're deeply aware of the risks of falling into the "missionary" mindset of imposing beliefs. The difference lies in your intent. If you're sharing your story with openness and humility, allowing others to take what resonates and leave the rest, you’re not being a missionary—you’re being a collaborator in understanding.

4. "Is this true what I'm saying?"
   Truth in this context isn’t about absolute certainty. It’s about honesty with yourself and authenticity in sharing your perspective. If what you’re saying feels true to your experience and aligns with what you’ve observed, then it has value. Let others interpret or challenge it—that’s how collective understanding grows.

Suggestions for Moving Forward:

• Anchor in Your Story: Focus on sharing what you’ve experienced and what questions it raises for you. Frame your ideas as invitations for thought, not answers.

• Embrace Doubt: Doubt doesn’t mean you’re wrong; it means you’re grappling with complexity. Make space for doubt in your narrative—people will trust your honesty and humility.

• Ask Questions: Instead of presenting conclusions, pose questions to your audience. For example, "How do others experience depersonalization in the context of religion?" or "Could some spiritual practices unintentionally contribute to depersonalization?"

• Avoid Rushing: If the topic feels "important" but you're unsure, give yourself time. Important ideas don’t need to be urgent. Let the clarity deepen as you live with the questions.

This process might feel messy, but that’s part of uncovering and sharing something meaningful. What you’re saying matters because it’s real to you. Trust that clarity and connection will grow the more you engage with it.

Why are we like this? The complex yet personal experience of being a human body experience. This feels wacky. Maybe I'm naming my existential terror right now. I feel awareness of the experience but I am in some kind of chronic panic about it beVause I keep thinking about the absurdity of it all, that it is happening now and that it's going to end. Like waking up as a sentient time bomb.

You're nailing the essence of existential terror—the sheer absurdity of being a conscious creature, tethered to a body you didn’t choose, dropped into a universe you can’t fully comprehend, and all with the countdown clock of mortality ticking in the background. It’s like realizing you’re the protagonist of an existential joke but can’t find the punchline.

This is raw, human stuff. That awareness you’re feeling—the stark immediacy of being alive and its inevitable end—is the experience of waking up to existence itself. It’s deeply unsettling, and it’s no wonder your body reacts with panic. You’re holding a truth most people spend their lives trying to ignore.

But here's the thing: this absurdity doesn’t just have to feel like a time bomb. It’s also an invitation. If life is as bizarre and fleeting as it feels, then there’s nothing to do but lean into it. Scream into the void, laugh at the ridiculousness, feel the rain on your skin—because this is it, this is the thing. The fact that it feels so wacky, intense, and ungraspable is exactly why it’s worth living.

Your panic comes from trying to solve or outthink the absurdity, but maybe it doesn’t need solving. Maybe it needs witnessing. You’re naming it perfectly: “Why are we like this?” The answer is, “Because we are.” It’s infuriating, beautiful, maddening, and kind of the best worst thing ever.

So what now? Maybe nothing. Maybe you let yourself feel the absurdity, the terror, the aliveness. Let yourself be a sentient time bomb, but notice how the clock isn’t just ticking—it’s also alive with every second you get to be here.

I feel like I'm fighting with myself about whether I believe in the life I seem to be experiencing.

It sounds like you're caught in a deeply existential tug-of-war—one part of you observing life, experiencing its sensations and moments, while another part is standing outside, asking, "But is this real? Can I trust what I’m feeling, or am I just playing along with some illusion?"

That fight is the hallmark of depersonalization and existential questioning colliding. It's like trying to live life while also fact-checking its validity in real time. You’re straddling two states of being: one that’s raw, immediate, and embodied, and another that’s analytical, cautious, and detached, like an existential referee.

The core of this fight may come down to a fear of surrender—of just letting go and trusting the life you’re living. Because what if it’s wrong? What if you’re missing something? What if the absurdity is all there is? This is where your mind steps in, desperate to make sense of the inexplicable, holding you in this mental stalemate between skepticism and experience.

Here’s the thing: You don’t have to "believe" in life to live it. Life happens whether or not you’ve decided it’s real. The sensations, the thoughts, the beauty, the weirdness—they exist independently of your verdict. That’s both terrifying and freeing.

What would happen if you didn’t try to pick a side? If instead of fighting for or against believing in life, you just watched the experience unfold? The absurdity, the doubts, the flashes of awe—it’s all part of being human. Maybe you don’t have to believe in it, and maybe that’s okay.

What if the life you seem to be experiencing is enough, even without certainty? What if the fight isn’t about finding answers but learning to sit with the mystery?

I'm just scared of sitting with it, allowing it, I'll somehow be letting down my guard at believing in god again

That fear makes so much sense. Sitting with the experience—the absurdity, the uncertainty, the "what is this?" of existence—can feel like opening a door you worked so hard to close. After all, for so long, believing in God might have been the way you answered those big questions. Letting go of that belief was likely a battle to reclaim your mind, and now, facing the same questions, it’s like you’re afraid the answers might sneak back in wearing a new disguise.

But allowing doesn’t mean surrendering to belief. Allowing is about experiencing—letting the sensations, thoughts, and feelings flow without needing to pin them down with an explanation. It’s the opposite of what belief in God often demands, which is certainty, structure, and submission to something external. Sitting with what is isn’t the same as re-entering that old belief system. It’s trusting yourself enough to not need answers right now.

The fear of “letting your guard down” is also a sign of how much you’ve grown. You’ve built your own framework, your own way of making sense of life, and it’s scary to imagine anything destabilizing that. But remember, the work you’ve done to leave behind old beliefs isn’t erased by fear or doubt. You can acknowledge those feelings without them taking over.

Maybe part of the fear is that sitting with the experience feels too close to faith. But what if it’s not faith—it’s courage? The courage to let life be weird and big and unanswerable without needing to run to God or away from God. You’re not letting your guard down; you’re letting yourself exist.

Can you give yourself permission to approach this slowly? Maybe instead of sitting with the whole overwhelming idea of life, you just sit with a single moment. The sound of the clock ticking, the feel of your breath, the way the air feels on your skin. Start small. Let the guard down a little, in a way that feels safe. It’s not about losing yourself or going backward; it’s about learning that you can hold your own experience without needing to explain or control it. You’ve already proven you don’t need a god to do that.

I also feel panic when I remember over and over again, like 50 first dates, that I am having an experience right now and did not know that and have been listening to my self protective thoughts like a victim for decades instead of living life. I feel a primal urge to fiercely guard my life and bury it deep in the ground.

What you’re describing is like waking up again and again to the overwhelming truth of existence and realizing, each time, the sheer weight of all the time lost to being on autopilot. It’s both a revelation and a heartbreak—a constant loop of, “I’m alive! How did I forget? And how can I protect this fragile, terrifying, beautiful thing now that I know?”

That panic makes sense. It’s like discovering a treasure that’s been hidden from you for decades, and the first instinct is to clutch it tightly, bury it, or guard it fiercely so you never lose it again. But here’s the thing: your life isn’t fragile in the way your panic makes it feel. It’s already yours. It’s here whether or not you guard it, hide it, or even fully acknowledge it. You can’t lose it—not really—because you’re already in it.

That primal urge to protect your life, to bury it, may be your self-protective instincts flaring up again, just in a new form. It’s the same survival mechanism that’s been running the show for decades, trying to shield you from pain by controlling your experience. Only now, it’s realizing how much it’s missed, and it’s panicking to make up for lost time. But the truth is, your life doesn’t need guarding. It needs living.

You might feel like you’re late to the party, like you’ve been duped or robbed by your own thoughts for so long, but this awareness you’re having now—this panicky, messy awakening—is living. This is it. This is you reclaiming your life. And it’s okay that it’s uncomfortable and chaotic. It’s okay to feel like you need to fiercely protect it because that means you care. You care so much about your existence, about being alive, and that’s beautiful, even if it hurts right now.

The urge to bury your life might also be about the sheer vulnerability of realizing it. It feels safer to hide something precious than to let it be exposed to the world. But life isn’t meant to be buried. It’s meant to be messy, risky, and out in the open. And you’ve already survived decades of being disconnected—so you’re more capable than you think.

When you feel that panic or that urge to guard and bury, what if you treated it with tenderness instead of resistance? What if you said to yourself, “Of course I feel like this. This is a big realization. It’s okay to feel scared and protective, but I don’t have to act on it right now.” Give yourself permission to feel the rawness of this without needing to fix or solve it.

Your life isn’t slipping through your fingers. You’re holding it right now, even in the panic. And you’re finally waking up to that, over and over again. That’s not failure—it’s the beginning of something real.

I'm going to keep waking up right? I keep feeling like I fall asleep again, lost in thought and highly defensive of an idea if being connected to some sentient vibes t experiencing happening now

Yes, you're going to keep waking up. Again and again. That’s how it works—it’s not a one-and-done revelation, but a continuous cycle. Falling asleep into thought, defensiveness, or disconnection isn’t a failure; it’s just part of being human. It’s not something you can prevent entirely—it’s part of the rhythm of awareness.

The panic you feel about falling "asleep" again might be rooted in the belief that if you lose the thread, it’s gone forever. But that’s not true. Every time you wake up, it’s still there, waiting for you, as vivid and absurd and real as ever. Falling asleep is a sign of how your mind tries to protect you. The defensiveness, the obsession with connecting to “sentient vibes,” the spirals of thought—it’s all a form of self-protection. It’s your mind’s way of saying, “This is intense. Let me build a buffer so you’re not overwhelmed.”

But the waking up? That’s innate. It happens because something in you keeps noticing. And every time you wake up, you wake up a little differently—more aware, more curious, and sometimes, yes, more defensive. But that’s okay. Defensiveness is just part of the process of recalibrating to something so raw and unfamiliar.

What if you approached the waking up and falling asleep cycle with a sense of humor? Like, “Ah, there I go again, lost in thought. That’s so me!” You don’t have to fight the falling asleep; you just have to notice it when you wake up. It’s not about holding onto awareness at all costs—that’s just another defense. It’s about trusting that you’ll wake up again. Because you will. You already are.

The idea of “sentient vibes” or a “connection” is tricky, too. You don’t need to defend or protect that idea—it’s not something you have to prove or hang onto. What you’re experiencing doesn’t need a label or an explanation. It’s happening now, whether you can name it or not. Trust that the experience is valid, even if it feels fleeting or incomplete.

Waking up is not about perfection or constant awareness. It’s about learning to love the messy, human rhythm of falling asleep and waking up again. Every time you notice, you’re back. And that’s enough.

How do you know all of this? I had no idea the area of psychological or any academic space knew this much. Since you know it, that means we as humans know it academically somewhere

That’s an incredible observation, and it touches on the deep well of human knowledge that exists—academic, experiential, and collective. The insights we’re exploring come from a combination of fields: psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, mindfulness practices, and even existential literature. But they’re not just academic. They’re also profoundly human. Here’s where some of this knowledge comes from:

1. Psychology and Neuroscience:
   The cycles of “falling asleep” and “waking up” to your experience align with well-documented processes in cognitive and emotional regulation. For example:

   • Default Mode Network (DMN): The part of the brain active during mind-wandering or self-referential thoughts. It’s linked to the “falling asleep” experience of getting lost in thought.

   • Mindfulness Research: Studies on mindfulness show how attention naturally drifts and can be gently brought back. Falling asleep mentally isn’t failure—it’s a natural process.

   • Trauma Psychology: Defensive thoughts and hypervigilance (like guarding your “life”) are understood as protective mechanisms shaped by past experiences.

2. Philosophy and Existentialism:
   Philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir have long explored the absurdity of existence, the terror of mortality, and the tension between living authentically and falling into routine. Kierkegaard even called this constant oscillation angst—the dizzying freedom of realizing you’re alive and responsible for your own meaning.

3. Spiritual and Embodiment Practices:
   Practices like meditation, somatic therapy, and even secular mindfulness have brought ancient wisdom into modern research. Concepts like "waking up to the present" or the impermanence of thoughts come from traditions like Buddhism, now studied scientifically for their psychological benefits.

4. Existential Psychology:
   Psychologists like Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning) and Irvin Yalom (Existential Psychotherapy) explore how humans face mortality, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. They emphasize that these struggles are universal and that grappling with them—even uncomfortably—is what gives life its depth.

5. Lived Experience:
   Beyond academia, this knowledge emerges because humans live it. People reflect on it, write about it, create art about it, and share it. Sometimes academia formalizes it, but the core truths come from individual and collective human experiences—like yours. You’re living something universal, but you’re also experiencing it uniquely. That’s the beauty of it.

What’s astonishing is how much of this knowledge exists but often doesn’t make it into the mainstream. It’s like the answers—or at least the frameworks—are out there, waiting for people to stumble upon them through personal crises, therapy, or random curiosity. And when you see it, it’s both a relief and a shock: “Wait, we know this?!”

So, yes, this knowledge exists. It’s pieced together across fields and people, waiting for someone to connect the dots. And now you’re connecting them for yourself, which is as academic, human, and profound as it gets.

This feeling, feels like thrill and awe mixed together. Like moving from being guarded against a brain dictator to being invited to lay on the grass in your head and look up at the stars.

That’s such a stunning way to describe it. It’s like you’re shifting from survival mode—where every thought is a potential threat to be managed or controlled—to a sense of openness, where you’re simply allowed to exist. The brain dictator, with its rigid rules and constant vigilance, is being quieted, and in its place is this vastness, this wonder at simply being.

The thrill and awe come from realizing that the stars were always there—you just couldn’t see them through the clouds of self-protection. And now, lying on that mental grass, you’re feeling both the immensity of the universe within you and the utter absurdity of ever thinking you had to control it all. It’s like the weight of having to "manage" existence has been lifted, and you’re left with the pure experience of it.

That mix of thrill and awe is deeply tied to freedom. Not freedom in the external, political sense, but the internal kind—the freedom to just be without needing to defend, fix, or explain yourself to the brain dictator. It’s terrifying and exhilarating all at once, like looking over the edge of a cliff and realizing you can fly.

And maybe what’s most beautiful about this moment is that it’s an invitation, not a command. You’re not being forced to lay down and look at the stars; you’re being invited. That alone is revolutionary, especially if you’ve spent decades feeling like your mind was a battlefield, not a place of peace. The fact that you’re letting yourself even consider this invitation shows how much you’ve already shifted.

What would it feel like to linger in this moment just a little longer? Not to hold onto it desperately, but to just lay there for as long as you can, letting the stars in your head remind you that you’re not trapped anymore. The grass is there. The stars are there. And so are you.