Mystery Unfolding

“Aging is a mystery and we are all detectives,

but there are no solutions just waiting out there to be discovered.

 The future is within us, within our ever evolving selves.

We have already outlived the centuries old social order

 that can no longer define who we are. 

We must now engage in sometimes chaotic creation

 of a whole new stage of life.

 We are truly up to us.”

                                                                             — Rabon Saip

 

“We are truly up to us.” We always have been, but now it is more obvious, and necessary. Uncertainty blankets the world. No one knows what’s going to happen. Fear, anxiety and hope run rampant in the minds of the people. It is both, what the Chinese curse calls for; an interesting time, and a medicine moment. The wheel is turning. Balance is a condition of the past, if ever.

 

This is a great moment for the old. Those of us who have been around the block a few times, recognize the twisting, turning path, and know to lean into the forces of push and pull. We have outlived expectations, prescriptions, conventions, and all manner of fantasies. There is nothing left of us, but our inner core. Essentially, we are leftovers, picked clean, new in a preposterous way. Innocent by means of reduction. Stripped of everything, but our potential.

 

There is a change spasm happening. Reality is questionable. Words like conspiritual are showing us the liquidity of everything. It is a time like no other, even the description ‘unprecedented’ is too tame. There is a touch of wild madness in the air. What is old is no more. Leaving only what has the wit to survive. 

 

Lies are another word for myth, manipulation for influence, and reality for perception. Who can be trusted? The social sphere is more fragmented than usual. Out of all of this chaos comes opportunity. The old, by years and experience, have no corner on the adaptive market, we have no super power, we are not sacred cows, but we have a lot of practice with letting go. And oh is this a time of letting go! The sands are sliding through our fingers. Obsolescence is a mean and exacting teacher.

To be old now is a virginal experience. People, shocked by what we have been forced to experience, have been brought to the living edge of creation, where we are getting to witness the messy process of coming into existence. In the chaos we are reconstituted.

 

Everyone gets to be ourselves — if we can stand the uncertainty. Many of the theories, conspiratorial or otherwise, rose out of a desire to reduce uncertainty, by trying to explain what cannot be explained. Especially, the best conspiritual beliefs! We, old folks, and young people alike, are now up to us, like never before. What is, is becoming!’

 

Everyone needs a dose of vitamen A — Awe, at this moment!

 

 

 

  

Farther Along

When you are getting older, there isn’t much you can rely on. Aging, despite the body changes, is such a mysterious process. It is hard to believe that some inexorable process, other than the breakdown of what was, is happening. I call it ripening. This piece is about the Mystery that goes on, mostly unnoticed, while we are bemoaning the new difficulties we are experiencing. There is something else happening, something so unknown, and beyond us, that it deserves some attention, some recognition. As I have just learned, it is good that we cannot make it happen.

 

Old age is a kind of special indignity. Besides wrinkles, loss of memory and balance, advancing ear hair and invisibility, there comes, the losses that propel one into a broader orbit. An overview looms. New perspective comes into sight. And suddenly, if you are not too mesmerized by what you’ve lost, escape velocity is near at-hand. For the first time, you can feel the possibility, of being yourself, of no longer being defined by the conventions of the consensus conspiracy theory. Ripening means you get to fall from the tree.

 

Some people are totally terrified at the prospect of that moment. Whereas, some old people are not. What’s going on? Ripening is taking everyone beyond control, beyond imagination, beyond themselves. It’s a free service that the Universe provides.

 

Anyway, getting there is a kind of foreplay, full of surprises, misdirection, and passionate anticipation. No one knows where the fruit goes, or what service it renders, but falling is much like flying, so exhilaration takes hold. The really interesting part occurs when one recognizes that one has always been falling, one  is just farther along.  Then joy settles in.

 

Some people already realize the Universe is diddling with them. They have anticipatory joy, pre-orgasmic elation. Getting older, for them, is non-rational, and highly suspect to the culture. 

 

Farther along is a Mystery, that turns us all in new directions, without our consent, and approval. This is equal parts terror and awe. It is the finest e-ticket ride the Universe has to offer.  Thrills, spills, and beguiling hills to climb. The body’s breakdown heralds the end of this ride, and the perspective that makes sense of the whole strange trip. It is the end and the beginning all at once. Imagine that!

 

Farther along, there waits a being of light. It is what you are becoming. A mystifying sensuous light, that is a product of a lifetime of befuddled learning. One can sense this unfolding presence, this lightness of being, in the way things keep evolving, becoming more complex as they become simpler. Farther along lies breakdown, the breakthrough, that we cannot make, which gratefully insures that we get there.

 

Yes, paradox rules.

 

 

 

 

Bows Or Bows

I was listening to music, in this case Carlos Nikai. He had done something interesting to me, by playing with some traditional Japanese musicians. The collection of music was called, “The Island of Bows.” I read it like bows and arrows. The title seemed off to me. It was only later that I realized my mistake. Then came a fascination. I had inadvertently come across two different words that were spelled alike. That cast me into a creative reverie. This is a facet of that moment.

 

I delighted by finding these two words with such different meanings. One is a gesture, an act of deference, a way of honoring the ineffable in another. The other, an instrument for projecting control, designed to assert one’s will, and change what is. It seemed to me, they couldn’t be more different, yet they shared something in common.

 

For some reason, I began playing with them. Whether a bow or a bow, is to me, the difference between inside, or outside. A bow to the mysterious is also an act of reverence to Mystery wherever it appears, including, and especially, within.  Whereas, a focus outside oneself is what is required to be good at archery. The essential foci of each is dramatically different.

 

I was also captivated by the way each of them reflected a totally different way of being. Inside/outside. I thought of all the times I’ve tried to alter the world by projecting my will. I’ve suffered a lot because of my stubborn determination to make the world different than it is. I’ve also accomplished more than I know. I keep doing it. Paying the price of suffering just for the moments when I get to make some difference. Moments, I know exist, even though I cannot always recognize them. Moments, I do recognize, that hurt me and others.

 

Conversely, the more reverence I have, the more I bow down to Life, the more I am able to live in harmony. Bowing, for me, as a human male, has taken a lifetime to learn. I know I’m still learning. It took a long time for me to get that I had to look around inside, at what I could see, and revere there, then I could perceive and bow to in others. Bowing, to me, has a very internal dimension.  Not to mention, how much arrogance and hubris I have to overcome, just to remember that bowing is an option.

I’m equally fascinated by their commonality. Each form of bow is utterly human. Each activity conveys something about our orientation. It might be said that both are essential to a human life; the willful imposition, and recognition of the Mystery and reverence. The inner and the outer.

 

We are at a time when more balance is essential, maybe Covid is doing the job, but it seems like that balance requires us, to live more into both. Let’s intend to apply our will towards becoming more reverent.

 

Its funny, that such a little mind hiccup can lead to something so big. Inside or outside, and sometimes, both.