Loose Leaf Notes

~ At the end, the living spirit of one’s life is supposed to shine through the tatters of the body’s mortal cloak. The gold of the self is supposed to become more visible despite and because the body begins to fall apart. The inner knowledge is supposed to shine through and become more available as the elder becomes a kind of “living library.” Traditionally, elders were valuable resources and depositories of knowledge that could provoke wisdom in others.

~ The passing of time makes everyone older, but not necessarily wiser.  Many actually become more infantile and childish in old age. An extended old age can easily lead to a return of infantile attitudes and exaggerations of ego-drive.  A person either wises up to who they are their core or else slips into narrow patterns of ego-centricity.

~ It’s not just that people try to appear younger than their years and seem willing to trade the possibilities of wisdom for the appearance of youth.  It’s not only that people exploit the present in ways that damage the future for others, but also that those we expect to remember what life is all about increasingly forget who they are and have been.

~ Mentors and elders are those who have awakened to their own inner gifts and life callings. In learning to live with genuine purpose they develop a second sight and become able to perceive the gifted nature and natural inclinations of other people.

~ What is the point of living longer if it doesn’t mean becoming wiser and being more able to serve something beyond one’s little self?  Youth may often be wasted on the young,” but old age seems to be increasingly wasted on the elders. When those who are “old enough to know better” forget what it is all about, then older is not wiser and aging is being wasted on the aged.

The last stages of life either move toward a cloud of forgetting or toward a dusky light in which a person comes to see the reflection of meaning and purpose in their own life. If a person does not come to know themselves in some depth, they come to the end full of fears and angers, they arrive at the final moment unresolved, having forgotten who they were to begin with.

~ The point of aging is to slow downward, to descend further into the life intended by the soul. The point in aging is to fully incarnate the dream that brought each soul to life to begin with.  In consciously slowing down something ancient and meaningful may finally catch up to one’s life. In turning consciously within, a person may more readily find what they were longing for all along.

~ Many die without dignity because death has lost its dignified place in life’s mortal drama. Death is only admitted when the bodily functions fail and there is finally no alternative left but to give up on life. Having lost its connection to fate and its secret ties to destiny, death has become nothing more than a failure of life. Unfortunately, when death is diminished, life loses some of its natural dignity.

~ We have to grow not just older but deeper.

Post note: Read about a Micheal Meade workshop I attended HERE. Visit his website HERE.