Across A Lifetime

I tend to think differently. There are many reasons that is the case, but the most significant one is that I have a developmental perspective. That means that I see how Life moves through each of us over a lifetime. The most amazing thing about this view, is that it reveals the many stages of growth that are typical for our species. This viewpoint has contributed to my overall confidence about what nature is doing with us. So, despite our abuse of the natural beauty that has been bequeathed to us, I still can see the way Nature thrives when we grow and become more mature.

There is an organic quality to us, the animal nature of who we are, that has been forgotten in our rush to become civilized. This has had many dire consequences, not the least of which, has been our assumed dominion over the natural world. In the process, all kinds of hell have been set loose. Everything has suffered, and especially in societies where this blind adherence to the preeminence of our kind has dominated, the old have suffered. What Nature has designed as the point of most natural transition (death), has become a place of fear, ignorance, and superstition.  Captured within the hubris of so-called modern culture, humanity, and all of Nature, labors from the misperception that Nature and humans are separate.

This misperception obscures the biological magic that defines us, that shapes who we are, and the place we can occupy in the great circle of being. Life has a hold on us, even as we pretend we don’t have a hold on it. So, some of us, through maturity, luck, and unconscious instinctive desire, still manage to return to the headwaters, and fulfill the cycle of life. We are part of a drama that has universal implications. Souls cycle through life, and return to the source.

My luck has been that I was torn apart, so nothing made any sense, and what remained, was only what exists beyond nothing — the immaterial realm. Without the usual kind of sight, I could see my own blindness. It (my blindness) existed even when I thought I could see. Only then did I look more carefully.

I learned that Life itself lived through me. Then, I paid more attention. Later revelations showed that Life moves through all the stages of humankind. Old people are the latest stage of a larger rushing torrent, the final unleashing. Some of them, broken and wrinkled on the outside, experienced Life moving through inside them, and have become the embodiments of Life. They give an expression of our natural inheritance. They are the wild fruit of a cosmological Mystery.

The old today are not the old of yesterday. Life moves on. Paradoxically, what seems old is new. Elders are beginners with strange sensibilities. Life is arriving again, in a form that looks familiar, but isn’t.

I think differently. This is my song. The only one I am capable of singing. A developmental perspective has changed my viewpoint, and made visible the inside story. Don’t take my word for it, check out the old people around you. Some of them, will disclose the possibilities, that Life brings. 

That will be hearteningly obvious. Interact with them. Consider embodiment. Life is there, in its eternal passing-through. Now, interact some more. Add depth to the Mystery. There we are. The children of this place. Elders posing near the beginning, which is an ending. The origin waters.