There are wonders to be discovered about the potentials of aging. They are hard to talk about. This is because aging is so weighed down by years of fearful prejudice, and the truth is, that later life has so much more to offer than anyone expects. I’m going to try to give voice to one of the unexpected gifts of aging, that almost no one believes is likely. Surprising potential resides in our later years; paradoxical awareness is one of those unknown things.
Aging does entail a rather brutal breakdown of bodily well-being. That has been, for too long, the main thing that has defined perceptions of getting old. Thankfully, we have a more complete picture now. In addition to the known ravages of time, there is emerging a new sense that something, is going on inside. Loss is accompanied by gain. While we are growing a brittle and vulnerable husk, a being of another sort is taking shape within. This one is privy to unexpected sensitivities; it sees the world differently.
One of the attributes of this new being, which is not evenly distributed amongst old people yet, is a new, more complex and simpler way of perceiving the world. Some old folks are discovering capabilities they have never sought, and that now are altering their consciousness. They live in a world where hitherto the capabilities coming from within, were found only in mystics, shamans, and the spiritual masters. Paradoxically, the old are being reduced, and coming into an utterly new phase of life. One, that is numinous with the unexpected.
To give you, the reader, a hint of your own possible future, let me illustrate how this development changes everything. Common knowledge contains the grievous notion of impermanence. Buddhists have tried to shape it into a kind of daily awareness, to aid the growth of compassion. Whereas, paradoxical awareness links loss and gain, coupling impermanence with emergence, rapture with suffering, death with birth, and the new with the old. Not just putting the experiences side by side, but asserting they are different aspects of the same thing. What ails us also heals us. What befalls us, crippling the life we have known, also introduces us, to a new freshly enabled way of being. Twists are the way of life; renewal emerges from accumulating dust.
This is something of the form of wisdom that courses through the mixed-up thoughts of the elderly. It is mostly inside, manifesting as love of life. It is confusing, compelling, anxiety-producing, and deeply liberating. Life gets better, in unexpected ways.
There is little to do about this development. No one deserves it, and yet, it happens. No one can intend it into being, thus rapture and suffering take place, and yet, it happens. It is an unexpected gift of aging, a flowering of potential, a wild profusion, and yet, a simple expression of the miracle of life.
Go ahead and ripen, don’t delude yourself, you have no choice, you are going to flower anyway. And maybe, the richly fragrant and unique quality of Creation you embody, will be something paradoxical too.
Finally, this element of some old persons lives, allows another most unexpected thing. The onset of paradoxical awareness arouses wakefulness of the enchantment in the world. When all is connected, then natural miracles become normal. The world is saturated with meaning from on high; connecting each of our lives with a living cosmos.
