PRELUDE TO ANOTHER DIGIT

“I am older than I ever intended to be.”

That is a line from the wonderful play and subsequent movie A Lion In Winter. I first heard it in college, which I freely admit was a long, long time ago. I thought at the time that I had an accurate perspective on what it meant.

I did not.

As an aspiring performing artist, I believed at the time that getting “old” was the worst thing that could ever happen. I of course did not stop and consider the alternative. I also ignored the inevitability that if I lived long enough I too would one day be “older than I ever intended to be.”

One of the biggest surprises of my lifetime is how much I like being a man of an age. I will soon be sixty-seven, and the disbelief I sometimes feel around that is not accompanied by any unpleasantness or dread. I feel a greater freedom than I have ever felt. My priorities and sense of purpose are crystal clear. There is a certainty about why I am here, and what I am about. I dwell consistently in a spiritual reality that fuels my living and feeds my serving. I awaken each day with a granular gratitude that I have another day to awaken and contribute more.

There is way more sand in the bottom of my hourglass than there is in the top. Much more of my life experience is now downstream than what is flowing toward me. That does not trouble me at all. It gifts me with an urgency about how I choose to spend my remaining days. It clarifies the importance of applying my values and navigating via my priorities. Purpose is my compass, and my life experiences my map of awakening. I rarely lose a sense that regardless of what circumstances are occurring there is always something greater than the manifest realm with all its challenges and dramas.

My body and physical capabilities are not what they once were. I admit to having more cognitive pauses than in previous years. I see very little detail without the aid of my glasses. What used to be up there is now down here. What used to be tight and smooth is now saggy and crepey. And I humbly embrace that I also experience more clarity, maturity, and wisdom than I ever have. I let things slide off me easily. I have clear boundaries which also grant me a deeper sense of connection. My belonging is free of attempts to fit in, which is liberating beyond measure.

I appreciate deeply that against all odds I am older than I ever intended to be.

In a mostly youth obsessed culture I relish that I have lived long enough to proudly wear the moniker senior citizen. I do not hesitate to flash my Medicare card. I hold no shame around the disability placard that hangs from my rearview mirror. The feet that used to so frequently wear Capezio dance shoes and the latest fashion almost exclusively don Sketchers and Crocs. I have lived long enough to choose comfort over trend, and it tickles me more than I can say.

As I am poised to add another digit to the length of my incarnation I do so mindful that aging is no longer the adversary it once was. I am clear that I have no more mountains to climb. The fact that it is no longer physically possible for me to even climb stairs is secondary. Goals and aspirations have faded as my present moment experience is what matters most. How I am relating to life as it is, is what matters most. While I once wanted to change the world, I now want to simply love it as it is.

To those who say age is merely a state of mind I choose not to disagree. I know what it is to me. I do not identify with it, but neither do I deny it. I have been young. I have been middle age. I already experienced those places in the human experience. I do not need to pretend that I can somehow magically have that again. From this perspective I realize I did not fully inhabit those timeframes. I took them for granted.

And now I am committed to being a vital, awake, contributing senior who is content to be older than I ever intended to be.

TO to FOR

It has finally landed.

Life is for me.

Nothing in at least my world prepared me to know that, let alone live from it.

I was taught that life happened to me. The best I could do was to fend off what was coming at me. Life was largely something to defend against. It was dangerous. People were dangerous. That was the programming. It was not exclusive. But it was there for sure. It saturated my experience from an early age.

I also watched almost continuous attempts at control. I mean, defense is one form of control. Constant scrutiny for danger is a form of control. High level reptilian living is misguided control. Natural, but in many ways not helpful. Of course, these are all attempts at what can never be controlled. Life is happening to us, and we reach for the tribal tools we were provided with to try and deal with it.

Even as a child I suspected there was something very off with this “to” approach. It did not sit well in my gut or in my heart. I always felt something stirring and moving in and as a more expansive inner reality. My intuition was at odds with my familial and cultural programming. Yet I also knew I was on to something.

Religion in many ways only supported the notion that life and God happened to me. Praying to have things be different rarely resulted in changed effects or circumstances. God happened to the Biblical characters of old and God was happening to me, my family, my world. Trying to appease a God that was happening “to” me resulted not in increased faith but in increased anxiety.

The shifting in my perceptions and experiences was slow but also steady and sure. My suspicions gained traction and I gathered more and more evidence that life was not only happening to me. At first, I began to feel the way that life was not only happening TO but also THROUGH me. This was subtle at first, but by focusing energy into it, it began to gain momentum. Velocity. It came in tangible waves.

I began to surf the growing waves of intuition and my sense of cooperation increased. I began to live in a felt awareness of a Life bigger than “me” or “mine.” There is really no such thing as “my life.” There is Life, and there is my experience of it. This for me was quantum. It opened an entire new world of experience.

This for me was quantum.

And there it was. A quantum shift in my consciousness and in my experience.

This FOR me.

Life was not happening TO me. Life was happening FOR me. I only needed to choose to see it that way. I needed to go beyond standard reasoning and look FOR the hidden good in all things. It was always there. It had to be. FOR life was already FOR me. Even when I was not.

My constant defense against what was happening to me prevented me from perceiving the ever-present movement of Good that was always for me.

My constant attempts at control prevented me from cooperating with the Essential movement of Life in all Its grand orchestrations. In trying to fend off what I feared might happen to me I was also blocking what was seeking to happen for me.

And so it has finally landed.

Life is for me.

I know that to be true.

I trust it to be accurate and active.

And so, this is the perfect year to dedicate to knowing even more fully for myself and sharing widely with all who choose to listen that:

Life is FOR you! I invite you to join me in an embodied and actualized movement from Life happening TO you to Life happening FOR you.

2024. TO to FOR.

Let it be more than a concept. Allow it to be the Reality that it is.

Life is FOR you.

Let it be so.