 | Amazingly I have found that it is never too late to turn life around. I say this not sentimentally nor idealistically, but from the absolute reality of the true vitality and beauty that is now reflected and seen in my body as I approach seventy. I do not look thirty years old, nor do I want to. I am utterly enjoying being an elder woman who feels divine and can look elegant . . . and at the same time can enjoy ‘funky.’ |
A dashing sixty-eight year old male friend recently expressed to me that he loves the way I am and the way I dress to express it, and it felt every bit as joyful as if I were a thirty-year-old woman being appreciated. Even more than this, I treasure the sense of connectedness, solidity and love that I live with these days.
Though, in my earlier life, I may have appeared to the on-looker to be a successful University Lecturer, wife of a moderately famous man and mother of a beautiful daughter, I actually lived in a pretty wild and damaging way – living the high life, always racy and speedy, living off nervous energy, not paying attention to the reckless manner in which I lived my day, and not realising that the way we are in every day, in every moment counts, because this is it.
The quality in which we live and move every day is the true gold of life – nothing else really matters.
In the past I was always hurtling towards some chimera of a destination, I knew not what. Stillness was not a word or state of being I wanted to know about or have anything to do with. I felt indestructible and flaunted the universal laws of life and energy that I knew deep in my heart.
Around eight years ago when I was almost sixty, I met an extraordinary and wise man, Serge Benhayon, who presented to me a whole new way of living – I say ‘new’, but actually there was something very familiar about this wisdom which I had forgotten.
It all started with learning to truly take care of myself, to love myself so much that I would do this.
Did I love myself enough to start going for a walk every second day? Did I love myself enough to arrange life in such a way that I would go to bed at nine o’clock and wake up early? Did I love myself enough to stop hiding from life, to engage with the wider community, to upgrade my Internet, learn new skills on the computer, communicate with people at large? Did I love myself enough to come out of retirement and start going back to work to offer all that I can bring to the world? Did I love myself enough to be really gentle with all my movements – opening doors, writing on the computer, unloading the dishwasher, carrying in the shopping?
And what about being aware enough to feel how I was operating and communicating with people so that if my energy dipped and I no longer felt loving and caring, I could choose to bring myself back? Did I even love myself enough to begin to truly observe life and to express what I really feel about things to people in a graceful way without critique? And the 100 million dollar question: ‘Did I love myself and others enough to connect to the stillness of my essence and rediscover what being a true woman is?’
What an expedition it has been to discover that at last I would surrender and love myself that much! And when I discovered that, I found how much I love and care for everyone I meet . . . because at last I love and care for me.
This has been a life-changing, alchemical transmutation that has made my elder years the best yet.
But this was just the start. I began to become aware that the ‘good and comfortable life’ which I had settled for was actually a mere imitation of life as it could be actually lived in its fullness – choosing the good and comfortable life had been part of my hiding away from what I felt was a rough world. As a result I became a serial indulger and seeker of comfort. But now I see the insidious danger in living this self-involved way.
When I talk of the peril of ‘comfort’ I am not meaning aspiring to sleep on a bed of nails, refusing to have heating in winter, or diving into icy seas to prove something, which is a false and re-interpreted version of true austerity. I am not talking about this false version – I actually value nurturing myself and settling down at night in my warm creamy-coloured dressing gown and massaging my feet by the log fire, and I love good quality in cars, clothes and couches!
What I am referring to with the peril of comfort is that we have adopted a myriad ways of behaving and living in order to quell our pain and console ourselves from the anguish we feel from having chosen to separate from the natural love that we are.
Such an indulgence flies in the face of the beauty of true Austerity – which in truth means integrity, precision, simplicity and awesome-ness! This is a quality that emanates and moves in divine rhythmic order, a quality that knows true proportion and an economy that is naturally there when Love is the foundation from which we live. Practically speaking this is a way of relating to others that uses the natural energy of love and harmony directly as it is given, without subsequently twisting it by identifying with ideals, beliefs or conditions constructed by men and women and imposed upon life. If we actually lived lovingly and rhythmically there would be no need to resort to ‘austerity measures’ as the world currently re-interprets and uses this term . . . because we would not have gotten things so out of proportion in the first place!
By living in a more aware way I found that I had constructed certain conditions that I placed upon life to supposedly protect myself – this involved having an expectation that people should behave in a certain way and if they didn’t I would react, be indignant, or feel hurt.
Realising the damage that emotional reaction has upon the body, I decided that I didn't need to play that game any more. As I begin to become aware of my hurts and heal them, and let go these shadowy conditions and images that stood between me and others, between me and God, the sunlight of true relationship began to break through the fogs and mists and grow brighter, warmer and more accessible each day.
Today every day is a gloriously sunny day, even though the fogs may sometimes descend, the rain may lash, the winds may rail – simply knowing love and knowing that I am a Son of God has transformed my elder years into the most joyful and productive years yet.
By Lyndy S., Australia