Can We Think About Our Own Death?

I’ve experienced conversations, books, and at least one long workshop about death, where people contemplated death for quite uncomfortable periods of time, even one which simulated the process of dying and the organs shutting down and so on. So, if there is such a “wiring”, it is not a particularly effective one.

Most adults do tend to be conditioned to avoid emotional discomfort, and tend to have pretty entrenched and elaborate unconscious mental defense patterns to keep them from challenging their own emotional comfort, which tends to be ultimately unhealthy in the long run, both on an individual level and in terms of enabling terrible disfunction in families and society (not to mention politics).

No. In university I thought about my death a lot on one stretch over a whole weekend. So no there is no set limit. It only temporary went away because of hunger or the need for sleep.

There is a time I have difficulty thinking about, but because of the jelly we lost, not because I was facing my own departure at the time.
I was in the ER because of some symptoms I don’t even remember now. It led to extensive blood tests and other exams. I was sent to a civilian hospital to check for things they didn’t have a specialist for. It took almost a week to run tests and a couple of surgeries. During that week it was revealed that they suspected ovarian cancer, and possibly to an extent that my prognosis might be shortened to weeks or days.
During this time I thought about death a lot. What surprised me was, I wasn’t afraid. Mostly I thought about whether I needed to deal with anything while I could. Nope. Meanwhile, the oncologist was undergoing depression. He was reluctant to discuss what I was suspecting by then. He teared up.
For a couple of days, I was thinking a lot about it. No fear.
They had done biopsies to determine how extensively it had metastasized. When the results came back, the surgeon was so excited, he had set up a room for us with visual aids.

The biopsy results were so unexpected, he had consulted with a group of other specialists in case he had misread something. Their very reliable testing had been false. The biopsies were absolutely clean. He was so excited, I thought he might do a crying dance. For me, it was another day.

Having to know that I face every day of the rest of my life in torture and pain of an intensity which altered my appearance has made the topic of death as inconsequential to me as deciding to check my mail.

So far as I can tell, it is perspective.
Some people are able to think about death and not freak out.
Some see death a lot and wish they could intervene.
Some can’t think of it long because so much is unknown, they don’t know which direction to take the thoughts. Those people probably stray from the subject simply because their brain doesn’t know where to turn.
A final group, fascination. Some are intrigued to the point until they obsess themselves into murder or suicide.
Those are the ones who should make themselves known, and seek intervention.

It’s gonna happen. Nothing to ponder on.
I just hope I leave my family with good memories.

The limit is how long each individual can tolerate the thought, which is not the same from person to person.
People don’t want to contemplate their deaths because it is so depressing and the actual time and means is not known exactly.

Fair question, I guess.

But for the average human I think there’s a limit to how long we can “ponder”, or hold any single thought in our minds while excluding everything else. It’s not simply that we can’t tolerate the notion of our own death, it’s probably got more to do with the nuero sensory brain structure you refer to in your question.

It’s a mental characteristic reasearchers have observed and described for years, and philosophers and mystics have understood for centuries.

Here are Oxford nueroscientists reporting findings from brain scan experiments in 2019:

“At the lowest level, sensory information is mapped separately in the visual and auditory cortexes. Following this, this information is automatically integrated in the parietal lobe, which is located in the upper area of the brain. Only at a higher level of processing does the brain parse out the information from the previous stages and, if necessary, filter out disruptive sensory stimuli. This flexibility in perception is located in special areas of the frontal lobe that are responsible for abstract thinking.”

And here’s a passage taken from a discourse on Removal of Distracting Thoughts by the Buddha in 470 BC :

” Whenever we seek our higher mind there will still arise thoughts that are unwholesome, burdened with desire, hate, and with delusion. Then we may try to abandon them for other thoughts that are free of harmful things.

” But again our minds become clouded with delusion and coarse distractions. We then examine our weakness and resolve to struggle against what is evil.

“Even still our minds stray from true understanding, and false feelings return. Then we finally see the source of our confusion is the attention we give to formation of our own thoughts. When we release ourselves from selfish attention and look at our minds with only awarness free from desire, only then do we come to stillness, quiet, and true knowing.”

So what it all means is that our brains buzz with random inputs all the time, even when we sleep. It’s what allows flexiblity and adaptation. Shutting that flow down to focus on a single object, sensation, or idea takes years of disciplined mental training – or powerful drugs.

I’ve pondered about it but like @Dutchess_III, it’s kind of useless to think about because it’s going to happen anyway, and also you have no way of knowing how or why or even what it will actually feel like. I just found it to be a waste of living time. So it wasn’t that I was uncomfortable with the thought of it, but rather I didn’t find it to be of any real purpose. We all have a date that’s unavoidable. I try my best not to waste my time on things I have no control over. If anything, as I age I realize my time is only getting shorter. So I try to enjoy today. Now I do try to prepare though for what my family may have to do. I’ve been trying to trash junk so my kids won’t have much to go through and I’ve written down what they can do with certain things and numbers and accounts. I’ve still to write a living will. Still on the fence about what will be done in that case.

As a Christian, I am completely comfortable with my own death. I’ve pondered on it before, and I don’t avoid the idea. I’m going to live as long as God wants me to, and nothing will take me out before that. There is no fear.