The first form of existential terror I felt was the realisation of my own mortality at the age of six. I had seen my Grandpa cry on his deathbed before he died. I was allowed to see him lying peacefully in his coffin. I made the inevitable connection ... this was my fate one day! I came face to face with the Bogeyman and could no longer sleep by myself. I'd often knock on my mothers bedroom door and ask to sleep at the foot of her bed. This cold, suffocating fear lay down the template for all other fears.
This existential terror turned into adolescent rebellion which in turn evolved into 'the search for meaning'. If we're all going to die then why go through the whole charade at all? Right there ... I was closer to the truth, I know realise, than at any other time in my life. My ego was too fragile to grok this and the rest of adolescence proved too much. Decades were necessary to become strong enough to face to actually face ... Truth. Now the time has come to revisit meaninglessness. To ruthlessly question whether the years on 'searching for meaning' bore any fruit. I'd have to say no! I cannot in all honestly admit to any deep transformation other than a bunch of band aids: a sense of belonging, a distraction, a superstitious hope, a reduction of fear and worst of all ... a stifling sense of moral superiority! Through all of this you find yourself further and further from the existential facts at ground zero - that life as we think is (or should be) is meaningless, that death is inevitable, that evolution only cares about perpetuation of the species, that all the precious values you hold dear are involved in (at a fundamental level) survival.
Stick to the fecking facts! Don't be mislead by all the creative means Maya has woven to keep us in bondage. To keep us from questioning too deeply ... to wonder to far from our sovereign duty to pass on our genes. All the pathetic issues that caused suffering in this existence I've called life have been directly caused by buying into the lie of survival. My status, my looks, my self worth blah blah, blah! Jesus what a game nature has woven. What have we got to loose?