What if getting younger is not a dream?

People view their lives in fragments.  As you notice your mind racing, you may feel perceived phases enable you to focus or, feel less overwhelmed with all that appears to unfold for you. 

Whether or not you realize it, you schedule and set deadlines as if everything is a race with the invisible clock. You imagine life as symbolic sand in an hour glass where time is running out.  What if this is an inaccurate assumption?  What if time is a dream and getting younger is not? What it is all your choice?

Bob Proctor is a motivational speaker and teacher from The Secret who shares a view on aging.  During a recording he made in 2006, he remarked people assume getting older means getting tired, weak, sickly and increasingly inactive.  He also stated that at seventy-three, he felt he had more energy than many people he had met who were twenty three.  He said, when people tell him old people should slow down, he said that is a pile of crap. He believes you should speed up.

Have you ever asked why people of similar ages can appear and act so different?  Why does a retired colleague of my dad's make it to base camp at Mount Everest even though he has a brain tumor that surgery did not cure? Why do other retirees without such health problems have less will, stamina and drive? Why do some seniors take far younger spouses? Could it be a tireless libido? Heredity is part of it, but there's more. 

Some people are grateful to develop gray hair and wrinkles while others engage in a constant battle with time.  What does it really mean to go against your nature? People undergo botox, cosmetic surgery and procedures to preserve or prolong an appearance that is impermanent. Why focus on the physical?

Consider people with serious illness which confines them to bed and may adds years to their external appearance.  Happiness comes to represent the simple fact of being alive. The evolution they are invited to undergo inside heals years of bitterness, anger, pride and destructive thinking.  They come to feel happier and more at peace than ever before.  Are we each not choosing to redefine our own fountain of youth?

Society teaches aging is a choice.  You can take this literally or figuratively.  You can decide to age gracefully in your heart, mind and spirit, regardless of what other people expect to observe in your physical body. Committing to a certain mindset can feel a bit limiting.  Despite this, how you think actually determines your joie de vivre and vision of freedom.

If you are aware of aging relatives, you may also begin to view aging differently, even if you feel youthful.  To align ourselves with our most precious values is what empowers us to refine a changing sense of purpose.  The idea of youth or aging becomes less important than learning to let go of everything but life itself.  Every moment, we redefine survival.  Where we are, our state of mind and physical form matter less than how we feel.  Freedom from aging can come anytime we choose to evolve with the events of our own lives.  We can cherish memories, but release the past and ideas that do not serve us.

Comments

[Alexys Fairfield]

Hi Liara,
What a wondeful and upbeat post. So may people are hung up on what society thinks of them and unfortunately some industries will not hire anyone over 30.

I just saw a news report today where a company was proud to say that they had four generations of people working there. They celebrated all of their differences and ability to bring a different perspective to the table.

Society looks down on age, yet they don't mind if cheese or wine is aged.

Btw, I like your new template. Also, is there a way that I can subscribe to your comments. Sometimes I can't get back to read them.

(Hopefully I will get back to read your response. ;D)

[Liara Covert]

Alexys, society seems to impose insecurities on people. Yet, it is people themselves who decide whether or not to conform to a given belief system. The more people learn to think for themselves, the more they raise awareness and discern they have choices about how to think, feel and live. How you view where you are shapes how you perceive awakening to your habits, patterns and values.

I have a friend in Brunei who lives with her husband, child and other relatives in the same house. This living arrangement is not the common set-up in western society. You might ask yourself how this could be?

Why is it that in Japan, they have the highest number of centernarians (over 28,000) and this longevity is celebrated whereas in other countries, a cultural focus on independence and self-centredness leads families to live separate and placed family members in nursing homes. No two situations are the same. We are all in transition.

Society may not in fact, "look down on" age but mirror back situations that prompt us to shift our perception. People are conditioned to view themselves as victims of something. They often fear accepting they make their own choices. How you live and interpret all conditions reflects to what degree compassion and love for yourself and others expand your choices. This has power to teach you new levels of dreaming, illusion and purely mental experiences. Aging and youth are simply distractions.

Under SS feed, the option to subscribe to comments RSS exists. This is a new addition.

[soulMerlin]

I am very grateful for my work. There is much about my psychi that would tip and slide towards the infirmity of old age...except for the fact that I have to train and work with young dancers. My body sometimes complains, but it knows that it is going to be bent, stretched and twisted every day. It also knows that it will deteriorate if it is not used and that the exercises will start to hurt and will become impossible...therefore it keeps young (and therefore affects my mind and being...from the outside in)

henry

[Liara Covert]

henry, some people will devour crossword puzzles as a strategy to keep the mind feeling young. Other people will undertake behavior that goes against an apparent norm. Whatever you choose to do shapes how you view and experience aging and youth. It is very subjective.

I marvel at a video I glimsped of a young man named Ram Bahadur Bamjan. Followers say this 18 year old was meditating without food and water from 2005, when he was first spotted in the jungles of southern Nepal, to mid December 2008 when he recently emerged in an incredibly peaceful state. Believers say he spent months without moving, sitting eyes closed beneath a tree.

Based on word of mouth and a video documentary made widely available by the web and tv, thousands of people travelled to see him in the jungles of Ratanpur, about 100 miles south of Katmandu. His meditative state, yoga-related flexibility and mental discipline, are described as halting or significantly slowing the aging process.

[Judy]

What an interesting article. I have always felt that age is a " state of mind " and ask - if you did not know how old you were - how old would you be?

[Liara Covert]

Judy, it is widely believed that you are only ever as young or as old as you feel. Imagine how your perception of life would change as you evolved to be aware of the impact of your thoughts on other areas of your life! Dream you are something, believe you are someone and choose to feel it.

[Evita]

Great message Liara!

I am a big fan of Bob, especially after the Secret and I love the idea of getting younger, while getting older - there are after all no rules :)

I am about to have a birthday that will put me in a new decade (the 30's) and a lot of people around me are making a big deal out of it that means absolutely nothing to me.

Is it not funny how society makes the numbers rule us instead of us ruling the numbers. Well ever since my studies on health and aging and spirituality took full spectrum I realize now more than ever that indeed the number can mean nothing and yet if you let it, it can mean everything.

As for me, I am definitely not going to be governed by artificial numbers but live out life in whatever state suits me best at whatever time :)

[Liara Covert]

Evita, one point about the mysterious nature of age is that no single definition exists that is universally-accepted. In efforts to explain it, age is set into categories, shunned or avoided because of fear. If you believe the will to extend yourself to grow is immeasurable, then numbers lose significance in other areas of your life. You decide for you.