Healing

The body is much more than the mind. The mind can interfere significantly with bodily wisdom. The body's mindless urges can also trouble the mind. These are challenges of the human condition.

Healing often entails telling the mind to yield to the dictates of the body. A common obstacle to healing, in my opinion, is the refusal of a tired and malnourished person to rest and eat properly. One result of this mind-dominated behavior is reliance upon drugs and alcohol for the facilitation of relaxation. Another result can be obesity, caused by reliance upon fast-food, sugar-caffeine drinks and carbohydrate snacks for energy.

The body's wisdom is simple. It will tell you when to breathe deeply, sit, sleep, eat or fast. However, to hear the body's wisdom, one must learn to shut off the mind's voice to hear the body's voice. This is where meditation can be helpful. By lying or sitting still for ten or fifteen minutes at some point during the day, you can tune into your body's voice and reap the benefits.

The choice to live entirely in the mind is promoted by technologically driven capitalist society. i-Phones, iPads, netbooks...all these devices promote mind-centered living. The eye becomes a portal for overwhelming amounts of mind-centered information. A mental form of bulimia can result. Gorging and purging. Cramming information and then blowing things/people up in computer games.

For the young and healthy, this is all a great ride. However, the ride itself, over time, can erode the health and well being of youth as it advances inevitably to middle age. By then, entrenched habits of being mind-centered, fatigued and malnourished start taking their toll. Healing balance must be initiated to avoid disastrous consequences.

Beginning a daily practice of some form of quiet relaxation or meditation for fifteen minutes in the middle of your day will bring tremendous benefit for very little cost. This can be done in a cubicle or on a park bench. Pay attention to how your body feels after these periods. Thoughts that seem particularly hard to escape while trying to clear your mind are the clues to what requires your healing attention.

Use the information access of technology to read up on good nutrition, the benefits of sleep and meditation. Health entails the ongoing healing of the inevitable toll time and gravity take on our bodies. While the mind may tell you that you are immortal or invulnerable, the body, which includes your brain, knows the truth of being. Living fully and well entails paying attention to that truth.

Fading

Graceful and natural aging in Western industrial culture has been corrupted by commerce and the pharma-medical industry. Hedonism has ruled the day. From Joan Rivers to Nip-Tuck, neurosis about aging has evolved into mindless and vacuous self-mutilation in the wealthier classes. This is occurring in a society which begrudges basic medical care for everyone. In fact, the same tax-evading seniors who are spending fortunes on growth hormone and plastic surgery resent supporting government programs to end porverty and provide a basic social net for all people in the society. This is narcissism of the worst kind, plain and simple.

I have come to see my own experience of aging as a gentle and appreciable fading of many of the urges and impulses which made my former life so complicated and frought with struggle. By accepting age and letting go of these habitually perceived necessities, my life has become simpler, calmer and less stressful.

The key to this method of aging is embracing the changes, physical and emotional (also physical in the sense of hormonal), which are inevitable, despite any measures taken to fend them off. For me, this does not entail letting myself go to pot, by any means. In fact, I exercise more regularly than ever, but more gently. I set goals and projects for myself daily, but I do so realistically with my most basic needs at the top of the list.

The Middle Path entails balancing these seemingly contradictory concepts and actions. The Western mind thinks in dichotomy. It is best to reject this mode of thinking , if you wish to age well. One must learn to think inclusively with an acceptance that many things, some contradictory, can be happening at the same time to achieve balance and wisdom.

Letting go, fading gracefully, is the key to dignified aging in my opinion. This is a keystone of my practice.

Layers

You may find that your life experiences will add layers of understanding and feeling to your consciousness without your doing a thing. Aging and sickness are life's great teachers. Unfortunately, most human beings do not reap the wisdom of aging and sickness until they have very little time to apply their increased awareness, empathy and compassion.

The point of practice is to learn as much about the full arc of life and death while having the time and energy to apply this learning to life. When this happens, the level of learning goes deeper and deeper. Then, when additional layers of life experience come along, more and more can be learned from those new experiences.

Enlightenment and liberation start with learning. Book learning and experiential learning. When one looks to the history of Siddhartha, it is tempting to assume that meditation alone led to his enlightenment and liberation. However, Siddhartha had the best education of his time as a young royal prince. He traveled extensively. He communicated with the most revered thinkers of his place and time. He was a worldly man before his enlightenment and liberation.

The deepening layers of bodily and conscious experience will come inevitably. We all age, sicken and die. How we prepare to experience these deepening phenomena depends on the preparation we consciously put into our daily lives through practice.

Set aside a time every day to meditate. Set aside a time every day to exercise. Set aside a time every day to learn through reading and communication with those you meet who have much to teach you. This is all part of daily practice.

Aging

Aging is a process which is maligned in the neurotic media of developed countries. This has to do with products which are sold by making aging the enemy. Cosmetics, hair dyes, plastic surgery, pharmaceuticals.

This distancing of the mind and awareness from natural aging creates and propagates mental illness, an unhealthy dissonance between reality and self perception. The illusion of youth fosters a sense of agelessness and immortality. These are neurotic defenses against the fear of death.

To approach death in this state of denial is simply stupid. As a hospice nurse, I can attest to the additional agony and suffering this leads to as death inevitably approaches.

Practice is about natural life. It is about being yourself as you learn about yourself. You cannot practice by hiding yourself.

Structure

Many people rely on their work to provide their lives with a regularity of structured time. Up at 7, at work by nine, break at 10:30, lunch at 1, and so on. In this situation, the basic skeleton of a practice is already there. For instance, from 7 to 8, you could stretch, exercise or meditate, shower, and have breakfast. At the other end of the work day, you could build another structure of time which would compliment your morning regime of proper diet, exercise and meditation/reading.

The key to utilizing and maintaining a positive structure in your life is regularity. How you protect and nurture your positive structured activities is a measure of how you feel about yourself. People who live in chaos reap more chaos. Eventually they burn out. Their lives are hills and valleys of crisis and elation.

With aging, the foundations laid earlier in life must support an increased burden of physical challenges, emotional losses, and periodic disease. This is inevitable. Therefore, building a solid foundation, a structure, while you are vital and strong, will serve you well in later life.

Practice is difficult, but having no practice is more difficult in the long run.