The Timelessness of Aging and the Self
Time, in our corner of the universe, seems to be running the show. Our lives are controlled by the clock. Everything we do is dictated by the time – of the day, the week, month, year. We look in the mirror and see the physical effects of time on our faces. When we hit the 50 mark, life suddenly seems to be running out. Along with our youth, beauty and virility, opportunities and the excitement of wondering what the future holds , seem to be fading fast.
I’m not wanting to put a negative slant on all of this – but the reality is, time is running out, for all of us. We are all on our way to a date, sometime in the future, that has our name and death notice pinned to it.
This is just how it is, in this virtual reality we know as life, where time rules. Is there anything we can do to minimise (if not eliminate!) the domination of time – and its scary face, ageing, on our lives? That sounds like a big ask. First we need to dismantle, and reconstruct our idea of what time really is. David Icke has written extensively on this subject, and I’m going to borrow some words, from his latest book Remember Who You Are…. I hope he wont mind:
“…..Like ‘space’, there is no ‘time’. It is simply information encoded into the waveform fabric on the Universe which we decode as time. The way we decode it dictates how fast or slow ‘time’ appears to ‘pass’. Information on a software disk can appear on the computer screen as pictures that seem to have space and time. The sequence moves from stage to stage and it seems like ‘time’ is moving forward. The scenes appear to have distance and perspective. But all of this is only information on a disk being read by the computer. This is what we do with regard to ‘space’ and ‘time’. When scientists talk about ‘space-time’ of the ‘space-time continuum’, they are talking about something akin to a computer game being decoded to appear as ‘space’ and ‘time’. It is all an illusion…..”
Hmm. Amazing how real these illusions can feel. Icke goes on to talk about time as being a loop. Ancient societies knew it was a loop; that the universe moves through a sequence and returns back to the start. “The ‘Time Loop’ is the holographic level of perception as we decode information in the NOW into an apparent sequence of events. It would look like a ‘loop’ if you could see the whole thing in the holographic realm. But the holographic is only a decoded projection of the waveform information construct and this information does not ‘move in a circle’; it vibrates in the NOW.” We are experiencing a small portion of the loop (our lifetimes) and so it seems we are moving from past to future. A useful analogy is a DVD of a movie. The part you are watching, is your present life. The parts you have already watched, is the past and the parts yet to come, the future. But you can hold the DVD in your hand and the entire story is there. It is the same with our lives - it is all happening NOW. According to Icke, the ‘time loop’ is a hack. Oneness is our primal state and it is beyond time and space, it exists in the ever present NOW. At some stage in our evolutionary history (the ‘fall’ of man), the time-space firewall was inserted into the program and we became ensnared in the control mechanism of time. I wonder though, if there is an evolutionary purpose to this………
We have both a human self and a timeless self (my upcoming book goes into this in detail). We have been programmed to focus on our human beingness, and to deny our timeless being-ness – and the time hack was largely how it was done. With the timeless self sacrificed (for the agenda of the unmentionables), we lost our innate connection with Universal Consciousness -or Oneness, or the Infinite, or whatever you choose to call it. It is THIS awareness, that of the timeless self, we must reclaim if we want to release ourselves from the hard and heavy grip of ‘father time’ (Saturn). This is the quest of quests. Spiritual adepts, Shamans and ordinary people with a sense of the extra-ordinary have been on this path for eons. But it is not easy, and I do not make the suggestion lightly – because to all intents and purposes, the task seems impossible.
For one thing, our bodies are clearly moving in this time sequence, reminding us of it, even as we would try to deny it to ourselves, through the increasing appearance of lines and wrinkles, thinning skin, new aches and pains, greying hair and declining energy levels (even if we do eats lots of plants and do yoga)! Ageing isn’t pretty, and it isn’t for the faint-hearted. No matter how we might try to convince ourselves, and our contemporaries, that beauty is on the inside – there is no getting away from the fact that it isn’t just our looks that are going! Some days it can feel as if we are losing everything… The kids leave home, our health declines, our job goes, people we love die, our parents die, we feel redundant on so many levels. We read ofenlightened spiritual masters, meditators of many decades, who still ended up dying painfully of cancer. If their equanimity and peace of mind didn’t let them off the hook, what hope is there for us?
Ahh but do you see what I am saying here? At the risk of pointing out the obvious, it is the body that gets cancer, the body that loses all its attachments, the body who dies. The timeless self, that part of us beyond the firewall, does not. The timeless self is forever connected to our loved ones. Our timeless self contains the essence of who we are (as opposed to the identity we have constructed and been conditioned into) and will store this seed of our talents, gifts, karma, for future experiences in human form. Those enlightened masterswho die of cancer, in pain, are not suffering. They have awareness of their true nature, beyond time. And this is their saving grace. It can be our saving grace too.
If we are to age gracefully – rather than disgracefully, we must realize, we can never lose what really matters. And that is our love. The love we shared, the love we gave, becomes part of the Infinite Consciousness we are always connected to. We will lose our human self, we will die one day. And on the way there, we will get to practice many ‘letting gos’ – to prepare us… should we be ‘lucky’ enough to live to old age. We will lose loved ones, we will lose our vitality, our flexibility and strength, we will see our good health and energy decline, our mental capacity dim, but we will not lose the love. Love is the essential quality of the timeless, Universal realm. Our timeless self is part of this Universal realm – and it has recorded, indelibly, every moment we loved and were loved – in thought, word or deed. We have access to this record, when we are in our timeless ‘bodies’.
Emerson said: ‘For everything you have missed, you have gained something else.”
I love that, and intend to make it a mantra for the years ahead. In gracefully letting go, of all that we have, and all that we would like to have had, we invite in something else. In surrendering, with goodwill, the gifts of our youth, we open ourselves to other, more lasting ones. In releasing our attachments to our ‘identity’ – to the human self we think of us ‘Me’, a softer, more genuine self emerges. This one doesn’t have to compete to be the wealthiest and most successful, or look the best. It doesn’t have to front up in the world and sell itself. It doesn’t have to look in the mirror and frown at time’s new scars. It doesn’t even have to feel great moving around in a body every day – it knows some discomfort is okay, all is part of the journey and it’s all temporary. Everything in the world of form, time’s domain, is temporal in nature. This new self, is much freer to be who it really is. Time no longer seems important. It is racing, faster now than it ever seemed to, but that’s okay too. It is an illusion after all. The truth is, everything is just NOW. So there is no urgency, no need to cram in as much as possible into every day. This self knows to take the time to bask in the sun, pet the cat, talk to the stranger in the supermarket, enjoy the coffee, delight in the simple pleasures of the senses, to feel grateful for the breath, to en-JOY being in human form.
In letting go of the identity we painfully constructed through our earlier years, it no longer matters that we haven’t achieved very much. We begin to understand a truth: ‘the highest form of achievement is non-achievement.’ It all begins to make sense. The surrendered self is able to age gracefully because it doesn’t have anything to prove anymore and it is not attached to the ego. The surrendered self moves through time in a different way. Much of the time it is a witness, observing the world and what is happening; deepening its understanding of love, honing its capacity for compassion. Knowledge becomes wisdom and the surrendered self is open to being used by the Higher State Consciousness, as it sees fit – because now it can be. As a self-preoccupied, time-consumed identity, it wasn’t much use to the Infinite – whose intention is to evolve. As we evolve our consciousness, the Higher Consciousness, or Universal Consciousness (home of our timeless self) grows and evolves too. Ego is not part of the evolution of the Higher Consciousness. It is only part of ours while we are still on our way to individuation.
Perhaps there is a higher purpose to the ageing process. It feels strangely unnatural – because in some, very distant part of our awareness, we know it is unnatural. This is not our real home, so the properties of space-time are innately foreign to us. Yet when we embrace the awareness that we are both human and timeless at the same time, we are both particle and waveform – we can find some ease. When we can let go of life as we knew it, our attachments, our preferences, our ideas of how it should be – as we get older, and live in the ever present NOW, we learn, viscerally, that time is of no real consequence– it is illusory. The peace and the knowledge we gain, through our ability to surrender, is a step or two upwards on our evolutionary journey. We see that our human self, like the particle, is here because it decided to play the game for a while… until it falls back into the waveform universe.
We are constrained, while we are here, by the rules of the game, and one of them is time. Constraints compel us to choose and ultimately to learn, grow and evolve. The choice then is clear: we either accept the rules of father time and embrace our ageing gracefully, surrendering up all we are asked to, when we are asked to. Or, we resist the process – and drive ourselves further away from peace of mind in a fight to disguise, from the world and from ourselves, the truth that time reveals. The former, softens and mellows the spirit, like a fine wine – opening the heart and body to express the timeless self within. This is beauty that knows no age. The former, hardens the heart, the mouth, the eyes – those windows to the soul. Life with this choice is a bitter fight to the end. Who would you rather be?
The world and the younger generation needs elders who have made the first choice, to help guide and heal them through these tumultuous times. They do not need oldies still stuck in their egos, afraid to relinquish their false identity, trying, often desperately, to be ‘one of them’. We, the baby boomers I guess, have a role to play here – and it is a vital one. Our accumulated wisdom is where it’s at. First, we need to make friends with time, by playing him at his own game. We give up resistance. Releasing and surrendering who we are, what we have and have been, is not done easily. It takes some practice. But we get to practice every day. It may help to remind ourselves that somewhere in the metaphysical universe is a DVD of our entire lives; it has been already done and dusted. We’ve lived it – and we will return to play another movie, further down the loop. We are just focusing, for now, on this scene, of this story.
My 90 year old father says: ‘Getting old takes a lot of courage.’ Let’s start by honouring all those courageous old people out there – it’s hard being old. And then let’s honour ourselves – we made it this far, and, if we are able to let go, every day, along the way, we may just find, the best really is yet to be!
About the Author
Linda George is a writer, yogi, and evolutionary astrologer living in New Zealand. She has been deeply involved in astrology, alternative health, spirituality and metaphysics for 35 years. Author of two books on consciousness and astrology – both finalists in the Ashton Wylie Mind/Body/Spirit book awards, she is committed to joining with others in ‘spreading the word’ in these waking times. Please join us. Her blog iswww.acosmicride.wordpress.com
Read other articles from Linda George, here.
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