18 June 2021
Ageing Context
Today, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about ageing. It’s something I think about a lot. When I was younger, I’d heard from Buddhists that the fear of dying is what unites us and overcoming this fear would bring peace. Similarly, in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, fear is described on pages 3-4. If this were true, then I wanted to get over the fear to live my life.
Careful What You Wish
By that time in my life, I’d had a bit of experience with the phrase, ‘be careful what you wish for but not enough to watch my thoughts on the matter. At the time, I’d wished there was a way of dying without dying, without causing anxiety for those I love, and avoid pain – pain I thought was what scared me most. Ideally, I wished the process of ‘trying out the death experience’ should be as close to going to sleep as possible.
I wanted to experience dying or close to it so I could eliminate the fear of it. Simple, right? And so it was, I received a near-death experience or NDE on my travels. All elements of my wish fulfilled. True. For a long time, the NDE satisfied my curiosity about death, and it allowed me to live happily.
Then I began to get older. The body shape changed, things started to drop, and birthmark-like spots appeared. At no point did I realise it wasn’t the dying people feared; it was the ageing process. It’s the scary possibility of becoming one of the people you felt empathy for because the age they were was so far away from your own.
As you become older, your wisdom increases a little but so potentially do some of your fears. This thought prompted the thoughts of not just the body showing signs of Ageing but also the mind. The assumption is because the body is Ageing, so then might the brain.
Ageing a Different Way
What if the mind continues to grow in a way that outgrows the body’s capacity to hold it? Stay with me :), remember when you were a teen, and you knew everything there was to know? You thought your parents had grown out of touch with reality? But somehow, your grandparents were able to understand you? What if your grandparents were going through a similar stage, but an experience cycle further along?
I mean, by experience cycle between the ages 0-9, you experience cycles from a never seen before perspective. Then, from the ages ten to 19, the pattern sort of repeats itself, but you’re exposed to similar experiences, but this time with consciousness for the first time. Then, finally, when you get to the age of twenty to twenty-nine, your affairs are more profound, and this time you have some tools, knowledge, or both on how to tackle things, including the unexpected, and so on it goes.
Each of these is cycles; you can liken then to playing a computer game like Mario Bros; when you first start, the activities are manageable. As you become accomplished, the level increases in complexity to challenge you to grow your skills. In a sense, you ‘level up your ‘experience cycle’. At each stage of increasing your agility and adaptability, you improve.
Responsibilities of Ageing
Someone younger can never know what it’s like to be older. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the older person to tolerate the younger and educate and prepare where they can. Remember, when you were in your teens, you thought you knew it all; how to solve world hunger, how we could run the country better, and you thought your parents didn’t know how to have fun anymore.
What if by the time you’re in your later years, you once again ‘level up in a way where those younger than you cannot understand you. At 50, are we still the teenagers of old to someone who is 80? Still, assuming we know what is best for our elders without knowing what it’s like to be there, but simply judging their physical and mental interactions? Could some of the elders’ changes begin to play with timelines differently from what we can relate at a younger age? Should we be supporting a safe environment without assuming the place their in is ‘unnatural’?
Today's Cards
The Cards - Analysis
Carryover Cards
Only one card carried over from yesterday, but Thunderbolt remained in the Goal position. Thunderbolt over two days suggests a shakeup over an extended period.
Cross
We are the World is in the Now influenced by Ordinariness. Ordinariness has visited a lot in the past seven days.
Thunderbolt is in the Goal position and has visited frequently in the last couple of days as well. Suppression in the Distant Past is a good indicator of denial or even suffering from depression. When I get depressed, it appears because I haven’t been looking at something I need to look at; sometimes that’s because it would mean upsetting someone I love or changing who I am; either way, I’m not being true to myself and suppressing my inner light results.
A Transformation in the Recent Past probably means something I was suppressing has either surfaced and changed the way I am regardless of my attempts to hide it. Is it something that has emerged, and given the thinking about ageing, it’s probably been something I’ve been ignoring. Or it’s something I haven’t wanted to look at and has made its way to the surface without the ability to rebury it. Transformation is much like being born and unable to return to the womb.
With We are the World emerging from the Transformation is seems a bonding or community spirit has resulted when living every day. So it looks like; however, I’m trying to establish some Control if the Future Energy card is any indication.
Base
My Feelings on the subject is that it’s just a matter of waiting to see what evolves, Patience. Ageing as you get older is one of those things you don’t necessarily want to hurry along.
On the outside, Others’ Views are those of Playfulness which would be trying to simply enjoy each moment as it arrives and live life to its fullest.
Probably the thing that scares me isolating (Ice-location) myself from the world and unable to connect to those around me. This fear comes from years of suppressing parts of who I am, even to those I love the most. It’s not so much a thing these days, but I know I’m good at it. My hope is I’m not hiding anything from myself which will surprise me.
Finally, the Outcome spot has the Ripeness card. Interesting the Ripeness card has shown up when I have ageing on my mind. The time is right for me to explore the topic, and perhaps, I need to simply surrender to the experience of ageing rather than fighting it. However, I need to find a way to live as part of the world and not try to look like a doddering old fool while behind the scenes allowing myself moments to be so.
References
- Osho, Osho Zen Tarot – The Transcendental Game of Zen, St Martin’s Press, ISBN 0-312-11733-7
- Rinpoche, Sogyal, 1988, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Random House, UK (Link to bookstore)
