Waging War with Aging

 There was never a time when AGE was not on the forefront of my consciousness.

Itty bitty little Tot

"How old are you young man?" came the generic introduction from strangers since the first days I started stringing syllables together.  And ever since those yonder years I have strung together my identity based on that number.

As a kid, what feats you could perform was directly proportional to your chronological age medal. 
A 6 and 9 year old were never gonna be fairly matched. 
I looked up to the older kids, as if they were superior in ways higher than their height.  I guess the immediate threat of pummeling goes a long way to a pseudo-respect.

The Dawn of Social Dynamics and Hierarchies

As I reached the age where I started to like girls, I based my potential targets on their age.  "How old are you?" was a precursor to sending the friend over to tell her I have a crush on her.  You could never "date" anyone two years younger...especially if you were a girl for crying out loud!  My girl cousin always judged how well I was doing by how old the girl I was dating was. 

Then came the surmounting of bases.  The average age for the first kiss is 15.  To me there was nothing sweet about being 16 and still square.  I'd kissed girls at 8, but I didn't think that counted.  Unfortunately your suaveness is inversely proportionate to your trying.

Young Adulthood

Since I was 19 I felt like time was running out.  Nowadays that's laughable!  But I was a deer caught in the headlights of my options.  I have yet to solidify many of these options, and guess what?  Strangely enough the oncoming vehicle hasn't squished me!  Hmm, maybe it's not real?  Life may not be all about having it figured out according to their standards!

In America it's all about reaching 21 so you can party.  21 year olds in other countries are already phasing out of that novelty, having been able to legally drink in clubs since 18, and practically since 15.  The party scene blurs the next few years.  But it's a blissful blur.

The graph started out-running me with its statistics:
     the average person finishes college at 23
            starts a career at 24
                     gets married at 29 (27 if you're a girl)
                            buys a house at 34
                                ...
                                     dies at 79.

If my life is already mapped out for me, then what's the point of living it?
And if I've gotta check certain flagpoles like a ski race, then am I really free...to ski?

Middle Age

Ooo the ying yang black and white phase of middle age!  On the one hand we've got things figured out to a large extent...on the other hand, we may realize that all our figuring has been on the wrong math equation!  Barking up the wrong tree becomes unbearably noisy, and we're sometimes forced to rethink our identities.  Children leaving home calls roles into question.  Losing our sexual appeal is a deep loss if that's what we have built our worth on. 

It's a time of re-evaluation.  This is always a good thing.  Seldom a comfortable one; always good.

Old Age

As the circle of life closes on itself it again bares too diametrically opposed states:

1) Despair at the loss of everything.  Including dignity, status, and life itself. 
When outward life slows down, we go inwards.  If we hate what's in there, the journey's gonna suck.

OR 2) Hope and peace in the seeds of legacy and regeneration that you have sown. 
A re-prioritized sense of the importance of spirituality emerges. 

Which brings us back to the end of my last post.  Yip, it's about religion.

Cos religion (or spirituality for all those hung up on terms) is a huge deal, no matter what phase of life we're in.  It's like, figuring out the rules of a game before you get too involved in playing is a sure-fire way to increase your chances of winning!

Let's not spend our lives climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against a building that's been labeled for demolition.

Not to end on a morbid note or anything...here's a little happiness:
LIFE ROCKS; GOD IS EPIC; FALL'S COLORS APPROACH (and another summer awaits!)

The 3 Phases that Everything, and I mean Everything, Goes Through (According to Hegel) - PART 1

“Nietsche is dead” - God

There was this philosopher bruv Hegel who painted a circular yet progressive picture of time.  He reckoned that every kind of history (including philosophical, religious and even the history of the psyche of your eccentric neighbour Gerry) progresses through three phases (Postmodern Philosophy of Religion 38-42):

 PART 1 (Second and third parts to come...)

The first is called Monism .  It’s characterised by a primitive unity, harmony.  There is coherence between self and other as they’re all part of an undivided whole. 

-In religious terms this is exemplified by the ancient Greek, Vedic and Roman religions.  In Biblical terms it’s the unspoiled world of Eden.  Oral traditions emphasise this unity and its holism still penetrates the African worldview.  There is theanthropocosmic union between humanity, God and nature. 

The same concept occurs in biology and psychodynamics.   Babies don’t recognise the difference between themselves and others until they’re 6 months old.  Some cases of stroke victims as well as autism are characterised by a sense of blurred lines between self and other, with the boundaries bleeding into each other so to speak.  Jill Bolte Taylor speaks about the blissful realisations that came about as a result of a stroke in her left hemisphere.  Her right, holistic hemisphere didn’t differentiate between herself and creation.  

 http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

God Can't be a Luke-Warm Cup of Tea

     We can’t escape responsibility.  Each generation is responsible for inheriting the world, modifying it and then passing it on.  We only have temporary custody of this planet, but what we choose to do with it will have eternal consequences.  Pondering the profound and ambiguous may seem like trying to read in the dark – a futile attempt to extract meaning in a sphere where our senses are far too inadequate. 

“YOLO; Live for the moment, as long as you’re happy, it’s all relative.”  The acceptance of this apophatic existence may be mere excuses that justify living the way we want to.  “God may or may not exist...who knows, so why let it affect your life?”

See it can’t be a black and white issue.  Either this Entity/Force/Being/Power exists and the structure of things is the way that the prophets, saints and mystics have said it is…

…Or it’s not. 

Like C.S. Lewis said, either Jesus is a madman or real.  If he’s either then a vague respect for Him is inappropriate.

Sure there can be variation on what you see God as, but all the major religions advocate the fact that, since God exists, our lives should be rearranged fundamentally.  That’s the path to true peace.  The amazing thing is that this God, although infinitely bigger and deeper and transcendental, penetrates our lives.  Hello there ants, let’s have a cup of tea.

Boil that tea so that the substance transmutes to a higher state - from liquid to vapor.  Please.  If not, then ditch the tea and get your kicks from drugs.

“What is man that you are mindful of him, the Son of man that ...you set him a little lower than the angels”.  But God prefers human worship to that of angels because we have free choice.

Yes, I know you’re Mommy’s little angel.  Now what are you going to do about it?

 

On God and Philosophy

Evolution is self-correcting and so is faith. Evolution needed the big bang and faith needs a first step. Martin Luther King said “you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” It’s only through the transmutation (tranfiguration) that occurs through the renewal of our minds that we can start to fathom these things. As Aquinas asserts, faith is not a way of knowing that leads to believing, but a way of believing that leads to knowing. Empirical philosophy is trying to put the cart before the horse and then whipping the poor equestrian!

Look, your conception of God is wrong, as are all of ours (courtesy of our finite minds). Although there’s proof that babies and animals have very different frames of consciousness than we do, any ENCULTURATED conceptions of God present in adult rationality are almost certainly flawed from genesis (as in both from the beginning AND also cos of Genesis the book). As usual, the finite symbols of language that we paint our rational consciousness pictures in are too dualistic to accurately speak of esoteric principles. The word “truth”, for instance, has been hijacked by empiricists and applied to a very narrow range of observable phenomena. This wasn’t the only conception of truth that philosophers originally pondered over. Truth is also a way. Its what is meant to be and, beyond human distortion, IS (ie. truth). Scripture says “test the Spirits [cos many can seem wise but aren't] and that “a tree is judged by its fruit”. So you KNOW that you’re experiencing God when the ongoing encounter produces the following:love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and self-control. It may sound cliched but these “fruits of the Spirit” are profound and empirically verifiable (at least psychologically) frames of mind. Seek and you’ll find bruv. It’s philosophers’ prerogative to conduct these kind of mental/spiritual/abstract experiments. You can’t see it as testing GOD (remember He’s not a fan of that). But test the power of prayer and the application opportunities that it produces (by following the inner promptings when the situations arise), and then check for increases in these Spiritual fruits in your life. And walla, you’ve found God. (For yourself at least, it’s a secondary concern to try and prove it to the empirically-obsessed who’s hearts are hardened.)