One of the greatest gifts of aging is the opportunity to live in the NOW. But it's more than that. It's living in a NOW consciousness liberated from the prison thought.
For most of our middle years, we scurry like mice in a maze, trapped in a conceptually-created labyrinth of identity, time, story, goals, and problems - all created by thought. These walls literally dissolve in thought-free consciousness, giving us the chance to wake up and step into a reality beyond thought - and it is glorious, free, infinitely beautiful, precious and always new. What a place to live! Heaven on Earth. As the kids say, "Check it out!"
In the absence of thought, there are no problems, goals, effort, beliefs, rules or requirements, for ideas construct each of these constraints. Consciousness without thought is an invitation to absolute freedom (until you start thinking again - but that is optional!).
Try this. Watch your mind. See how you flirt with absolute freedom in the silence of mind only to fall prey once again to ideas about what you "should" be doing, believing, or seeking. What can you do? Stop thinking, heighten awareness, experience the world exactly as it is (without the overlay of names, beliefs, and goals), and sense the consciousness in which all this - even "you" - arise. This mindfulness practice is not so hard - you do it every time you shift into a perceptual mode (art, rock climbing, painting trim, pulling weeds). Just do it intentionally (see my books for exercises).
What will happen as you take apart the thought machinery operating your life? Something completely, radically new, a source of energy and action housed in your very being. You will start doing what you love, you will love what you do, and you will be love. This is the doorway to absolute freedom in a world of absolute love. But you have to leave the old world behind. If you keep doing your regular personality and goals, you will only find what you already know.
Calendar, clock, schedule, chores, TV, gossip, beliefs, computers and countless other habits of modernity steal our freedom and instantly reinstate the fantasy world of man. Aging gives us the freedom to step outside time, thought and belief. Try it. You will never be the same. It's like walking out of the prison doors and being free for the first time in decades.
For most of our middle years, we scurry like mice in a maze, trapped in a conceptually-created labyrinth of identity, time, story, goals, and problems - all created by thought. These walls literally dissolve in thought-free consciousness, giving us the chance to wake up and step into a reality beyond thought - and it is glorious, free, infinitely beautiful, precious and always new. What a place to live! Heaven on Earth. As the kids say, "Check it out!"
In the absence of thought, there are no problems, goals, effort, beliefs, rules or requirements, for ideas construct each of these constraints. Consciousness without thought is an invitation to absolute freedom (until you start thinking again - but that is optional!).
Try this. Watch your mind. See how you flirt with absolute freedom in the silence of mind only to fall prey once again to ideas about what you "should" be doing, believing, or seeking. What can you do? Stop thinking, heighten awareness, experience the world exactly as it is (without the overlay of names, beliefs, and goals), and sense the consciousness in which all this - even "you" - arise. This mindfulness practice is not so hard - you do it every time you shift into a perceptual mode (art, rock climbing, painting trim, pulling weeds). Just do it intentionally (see my books for exercises).
What will happen as you take apart the thought machinery operating your life? Something completely, radically new, a source of energy and action housed in your very being. You will start doing what you love, you will love what you do, and you will be love. This is the doorway to absolute freedom in a world of absolute love. But you have to leave the old world behind. If you keep doing your regular personality and goals, you will only find what you already know.
Calendar, clock, schedule, chores, TV, gossip, beliefs, computers and countless other habits of modernity steal our freedom and instantly reinstate the fantasy world of man. Aging gives us the freedom to step outside time, thought and belief. Try it. You will never be the same. It's like walking out of the prison doors and being free for the first time in decades.