What at amazing perspective I have been given to understand my own aging. Here I sit reflecting on the incredible journey of age. I see it first as a psychological transformation, a progressive evolution of everything I have been and, as my own therapist, I examine the thoughts and feelings that accompany this transition. Indeed, everything about me has changed - my work, my daily life, my appearance, my home, my age, my health, my consciousness - bringing confusion, disorientation, sadness, excitement and new adventures. As a minister, I understand this as a divinely natural evolution and I search for spontaneous images, from my dreams and the world of art, to guide my metamorphosis from the psychological to the divine. Then, as a mystic, I realize I have already arrived. I am divinity, as we all are, experiencing the awakened mystery of being and consciousness that is the universe, always thinly hidden behind the fading template of my personal self. All this swirls in my consciousness as I enter this moment of aging.
What is aging? I am certain now that it is not what we think, not what we expect, not what science or religion tell us. It is a mystery beyond words, and what a relief it is remove the straitjacket of theory, belief, and expectation. Suddenly I am free to enjoy a magical, stunning ever-shifting kaleidoscope of experience that turns me inside out. This is aging. As I retire my identity, expectations, and beliefs, I merge instead with the infinite space of conscious being, and explode with joy. This is the passage of age, this dying into the light of divinity that shines everywhere. As Ramana Maharshi said to his followers as they lamented his impending death, "Where would I go?" It's all right here. It is right here that we dissolve into the unity, where the center is everywhere. Right here that we become what is and burst from the confines of separate identity. It is here that all our questions fade into the mind-free light of divine consciousness. If this is the doorway to eternity, it is already open and I am home.
I feel like the proverbial drunk stumbling home - drunk on the wine of divine being. Come with me. There is no place else to go. Turning into the very thing that I seek, I disappear like a star in the black hole at the center of its galaxy, with grateful abandon.
What is aging? I am certain now that it is not what we think, not what we expect, not what science or religion tell us. It is a mystery beyond words, and what a relief it is remove the straitjacket of theory, belief, and expectation. Suddenly I am free to enjoy a magical, stunning ever-shifting kaleidoscope of experience that turns me inside out. This is aging. As I retire my identity, expectations, and beliefs, I merge instead with the infinite space of conscious being, and explode with joy. This is the passage of age, this dying into the light of divinity that shines everywhere. As Ramana Maharshi said to his followers as they lamented his impending death, "Where would I go?" It's all right here. It is right here that we dissolve into the unity, where the center is everywhere. Right here that we become what is and burst from the confines of separate identity. It is here that all our questions fade into the mind-free light of divine consciousness. If this is the doorway to eternity, it is already open and I am home.
I feel like the proverbial drunk stumbling home - drunk on the wine of divine being. Come with me. There is no place else to go. Turning into the very thing that I seek, I disappear like a star in the black hole at the center of its galaxy, with grateful abandon.