Kiss and the Art of Butterfly!

Query: Does the foregoing title make any sense?

Definition of terms for purposes of clarification: (in order to make sense?)

Kiss: An outward expression of an inner grace.
Grace: A manifestation of favor or good will
Art: The quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
Aesthetic: Having a sense of the beautiful; characterized by a love of beauty.

How does one convey the sense of the esoteric discoverable in living? It seems to me best described as “Kiss and the Art of Butterfly!”

The foregoing pictures depict the beauty of what I speak reduced to image. The words defined implant the concept of which I speak if accepted as naming what I describe.

Neither the depictions nor the words with definition truly describe what I mean. They come closest. They come closest in portraying that mist that becomes mystic when we rise above the material consequence of who we are, what we are and where we’re at in this life.

The outlet to it is there, it is open to us. It waits only for us to slow enough to see it. It needs us to pause a bit in out pursuit of all of those goals life deems so important for us.

It is as simple as the saying “Stop to Smell the Roses.” In its simplicity, ever present, there, waiting for us to notice, do we find all that flowers beyond our material grasp.

This is what life is really about. We come into it, immerse in every part of it, finding, in so doing the beauty of leaving it. Paradoxical? You bet, but what in life is not?

It is this esoteric element ever-present through which we can transcend to any degree we choose to a higher place not part of this world. It is in this world we earn our ability and our wherewithal to attain it.

It is by Kiss and in the Art of Butterfly I find my meaning in life.b

A Testament of Aging, A Curse made to be a Blessing!

The Bodhi Tree at the Sri Mahabodhi Temple. Propagated from the Sri Maha Bodhi, which in turn is propagated from the original Bodhi Tree at this location.

A Testament this, worth the reading, worth following through to see the film and/or watch the play. It is about what we are about. It is about what is, the reality of what really is too often overlooked during our entire lives.

Appearing in the New Old Age Column of the New York Times an article entitled: Recalling a Simple Life in Brooklyn. I have posted it in my archive. Click on the title to read it.

It is a simple story telling of a diary left by a woman recounting her daily life as the losses of aging accumulated. It also tells what was developed from the story in that diary. Most of all it conveyed the message the Diarist offered as noted in the following quote taken from the article:

“It really drives home the point that life is not made up of great big events. It’s an accumulation of little things that happen every day that can make or break you,”

As we grow older, some of us cursed with the losses encountered in aging are able to transpose the character of them into the blessings that they truly are. This is the story of one who did transform from pain to sacrament the catalog of losses she sustained by becoming too old!

A poetry is there waiting to be seen about what this life we are living is actually about. We are born into all of the baubles of our world and given the task of discovering their true definition. That truth is their illusiveness, their emptiness, their total inability to scratch an itch plaguing us our entire lives.

It is not until we learn they are but distraction, disguised as having purpose and reward, that we realize this: We are deceived to continue in pursuit of each as it leads unfulfilled to the next level in this impossible illusory quest.

This continues as we build one quest on the next, seeking the “Grail” that must obviously be there and able to be found so long as we follow the rules. The rules of course are following the pattern that everyone else is following and do whatever required to maintain that definition we are currently.

Pain, loss, fatigue, frustration, all of those gremlins that accompany our aging, bring us to our knees leaving us but one choice.

1. Refuse it; deny it; suffer it anyway.
2. Accept it; thereby rise above it.

If you are smart, blessed or by some accident choose rather to accept it as suffer it you then position yourself to learn what Buddha did sitting under the Bodhi Tree. You learn what St Francis learned as he gave up all and went into the woods.

We simple folk lacking the imagination Francis or Siddhartha who is Buddha were blessed with to do as they did. Nonetheless we are in equivalent measure blessed by our pain and loss. It is this occurrence in the catalog of our lives that forces us to recognize what Buddha, what St Frances, what all of those other mentors we have realized. In grasping what is true in this life finds us learning its true nature and purpose. It gives us finally the peace and serenity we were always seeking.

This is the singular attribute obtainable in this life that can be carried from it. All of the rest must be left, your net worth, your home, your successes everything of importance, so avidly sought by us and grasped after we had it stays. Our loved one stay as well but part of the mystery of it, their love and your love for them goes with you as part of the overall attribute taken by you.

Sorreeeee!

I will be out of pocket for the next week or so. I will not be posting. Will start up when I am back in pocket.

We are Free as we Choose to Be!

I finish this run of four posts with this my fifth post. It deals Hoping to Find the Cure. This all the drug testing, searching for the cure, raising money and all the frantic effort spent in that direction. It is expended there at the expense of relieving the rigors of this disease for those of us who have it and those who care for us.

A worthwhile article ran in the Tangled Neuron, a blog that I follow and recommend. It is entitled The Trouble with Expectations. Click on the title or on Tangled Neuron to read it.

The conclusion of the article is contained in the following that I quote:

What’s wrong with a little hope? Given the long string of failures of Alzheimer’s drugs in clinical trials and the controversy in the research community over the causes of Alzheimer’s, hopes for a near term breakthrough seem false.

False hope can cause personal suffering. Some people with memory loss and their families are not planning for future care, because they hope new treatments will eliminate the need for that care…

It’s hard to say whether exaggerated claims and breathless headlines are fueled by wishful thinking, the need to raise funds, sloppy reporting or all of the above. I don’t think they’ll go away anytime soon. So it’s up to patients and families to look at the data behind the headlines. Be skeptical when you hear reports using the words like “cure” or “breakthrough.”

It is of the utmost importance to all of us suffering Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) or any other Dementia that we deal with it realistically. It is here, it is progressive, it robs us of so much and finally our minds than our lives.

It is what is stolen before the final indignity occurs that needs the attention it gets from so few. There are so many programs that can stem the slide, prolong the good time, the quality period where we continue with some independence, cognition and can maintain a sense of worth.

This need is overlooked by all the energy devoted to scoring a cure.

In turn we of those affected are too quick to put off the positive in the coping we must do waiting for delivery by the Cure. This will probably not happen in the time we have left. This makes it a foolish endeavor.

The reality is we have it or our loved one has it, it is here, it is and will get worse, it is unforgiving every step of the way. The only way to deal with it is to accept it as real. Then find how best a quality of life can be obtained by living what it is.

It is in this that some relief sets in. The old adage, thank you Ken Follet: “When all is lost there is nothing left to lose!” Starting from zero, the solid state in which we are, we are without any choice. All we can do is make the best of what is. That is a choice that remains.

It is with the force of this event that we are impelled and should look beyond the material importance of our life and find that part remaining to us. That is the spiritual part. It always has been there. This unique yin/yang event which has happened to us, this Blasphemy Become Blessing, forces us into asserting that which has always been there and available.

If we chose the power of spirit is there by which we can transcend ourselves into a higher state free from our material limitations, we can make ourselves free!

It is here we find God, we find the Cosmos; we simply find peace and serenity.

When All Else Is Lost Is When All That Is Real Begins!

September 19, Touchstones Hazelden

Meeting ourselves and our Higher Power is the universal spiritual process. Sitting before the curtain of our hearts may feel as awesome to us or as frightening as anything we will ever do. When we first admit to ourselves a deeper truth, we feel these overpowering tensions. For some of us, this is a necessary step which leads to self-knowledge and inner peace. We feel unique, different, alone, maybe even crazy. For the first time, we are listening to our inner truth rather than outside messages.

Let's think for a moment about today’s tensions and strains. Are we really aware of their source? Perhaps they are created by the disturbing honesty of our hearts? We may find our spiritual growth in yielding to the truth. When we are cynical about spiritual experience or when we minimize the importance of our soft-spoken inner wisdom, we are avoiding the truth from our hearts. And we miss the possibility of becoming strong from within.

I read the forgoing piece I have quoted from the reading for today September 19, Touchstones from a book of daily reading published by Hazelden. It is a book I have been reading everyday over and over each year for more than 30 years. This reading is part of my daily prayer as a recovered alcoholic. It is published for us and for our co-dependents.

Each day’s reading is striking, thoughtful and it adds something to the experience of my day. This day’s reading has been read by me on this day at least 30 times over the last thirty years. I am regular if nothing else about my readings and prayers in recovery.

Each year I am certain this entry bore a different meaning for me. This year it fits into the thread I have been writing on in my jottings for the last number of days.

On Sept 10 I wrote of Man alone, suffering the limitations imposed with aging, in the end having no other than love, his for others, others for him to sustain him. Whad’ya think of them Vikes with that Favre, Hey! Click to read.

On Sept 17 I wrote of the losses part of the process in our senior stage in aging. I wrote on the paralysis of possessions causing the difficulty we face in letting go of the material and living with all that is left. All that is left to us in the Home, in the final stage of this disease, is our capacity to give love and to know love, if we are lucky enough to have cognition to do so. In the Final Stage of Aging all that is left is To Love Click to read.

On Sept 18 I asserted that in loving and accepting love, particularly in our vulnerability, we find the wherewithal to free ourselves from the material bind that has tied us in all our lives to our material endeavors. It is this freeing event that opens us to that transcendency which we are capable placing into motion.The Power to Transcend when all else is lot! Click to read.

It is this of which today’s reading speaks.

Meeting ourselves and our Higher Power is the universal spiritual process. Sitting before the curtain of our hearts may feel as awesome to us or as frightening as anything we will ever do… For some of us, this is a necessary step which leads to self-knowledge and inner peace. We feel unique, different, alone, maybe even crazy. For the first time, we are listening to our inner truth rather than outside messages.

In those three posts and this the fourth I have written with purpose. The end product hopefully clarifies with this post.

The Power to Transcend when all else is lost!

Yesterday I wrote of losses leading to some of the ultimate losses. The losses I addressed are those of losing your surroundings, losing your independence and losing your material identity.

My essay dealt with the progression of losses in the course of aging, It then spoke of the transition, the onset of sufficient vulnerability that a care setting becomes necessary. It dealt with coping in the end when all is left is to love and be loved, there is very little else left to us.

The mention of love is prequel to what I did not cover. I didn’t discuss the aspect of loss that arises from the way we identify with the material aspect of what we are rather than who we are. It does not discuss our grasping for things, trying to hold unto them as relinquish possession of them. We perceive ourselves to be what those possessions with which we surround ourselves identify us as being.

It is this flaw we all seem to suffer in varying degrees that makes this experience in aging so very painful, the sense of loss so tragic. It is real; that is true. It arises from our fault of occupying our life earnestly. It comes from endeavoring to do what each stage of our lives prompts us to do.

We are prompted in life to do and be so many different persons. We go through varying stages in doing so. In each of these stages it is our nature to focalize all we are in what it is we are prompted to be.

We first endeavor to grow to be an adult. As an adult we are compelled to fulfill ourselves in the various roles to which our adulthood seems to assign us. In seniority we cope in the time when it seems all over and our door is closing down on life. These and many more states are all stages on which it is our nature to perform in the way each of them impels us.

We are made to do it like the scorpion who bit the turtle whose back he was riding midway across the river. In answer to the turtle’s lament: “Why, you have killed us both?” the scorpion answers: “Because it is my nature to do so!”

In our seniority we start the process of finishing our material existence and summing it all up. It is in this process if we choose to follow it, many do not, that we initiate our process of shucking our nature.

It is in this process we can look for and identify with that part of us that transcends our mortal self. We can seek out that part of us that aspires to continued existence on a different hopefully higher plane. What we surmise to be life after death.

It is in taking the step out of our material identity into our higher potential in the exercise of the transcendent power of love that we find the power to become who that is.

It is at this time we can assert to be our spiritual selves. It is this self which has been there all of the time. It has been lurking in our consciousness waiting to happen. Now is the time to let it. The way we do so is accepting and loving, both the exercise of what is transcendent in us.

By Transcendent I mean higher in existence than our material dimension. It is what some people call Heaven, others Nirvana and some Cosmos.

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the great leveler. It forces this on us in its progression into its dire results.

In the Final Stage of Aging all that is left is To Love

Aging without acceptance is one of the most unforgiving processes we can encounter in trying to live this life. The acceptance in aging involves many aspects. Things change as one grows older and the person changes within the center of all those things.

Aging brings different interests, different relationships, different ways in which one occupies their time. Frailty sets in. Before that one experiences a subtle limitation progressively happening. You don’t move as fast, you lose dexterity; it takes more time to do things that your mind once whiffed. You don’t notice it happening, you realize it sometimes in retrospect, more often you don’t have a clue. It is your spouse or children who let you know.

Things you could do, you can’t. Contact sports are not in your interests nor do your declining skills sustain your golf game, bowling or simply a good softball game.

The friends you paled with at work retire; you then don’t see them any more. Why? No reason, you figure they have better things to do than to see you. You retire and tell everyone at work, “Don’t forget me, hear! Give me a call, come over, let me know where and when you are stopping for a beer or going to a ball game.” Hmmm, no calls or too few calls if there are some.

Where are your friends? They’re at work, that’s where, they don’t have time for you.

You try activities some of them are great, some a little boring but they take up time. A senior golf league fills the gap of the times out with the guys. Bridge is kind of fun. Volunteering is very satisfying and gives a sense of fulfillment. Would you ever believe getting a kick out of wheeling wheel chairs around?

Things start to happen that are more significant in the field of limitations. It is suggested you stop driving, your bicycle is deemed hazardous. You start learning the bus routes, but this takes away some freedom. Do I haul my golf bag on the bus?

During this time you’ve developed routines and they have filled the voids that were missing in this new Senior Life.

Then more frailty ensues. It is not so safe being out and about you might forget your way home, or in your perplexity on whereabouts you are easy prey to be mugged. So you stay home more.

Now there are no calls but for a few old faithful. There are no activities that you can go to. You are kind of isolated and abandoned!

Before you know it you are unable to be alone and the person caring for you simply can’t do it all. It is time for you to go. The last things you lose are your surroundings and all the things personally special to you.

The “Off to the Home” time is the worst. Whether it is assisted living, nursing home or some situation of a different character it is the final act of resignation your independence.

A good article ran in the New Old Age column of the New York Times today entitled When Possessions Lead to Paralysis. I have posted it in my Archive. Click on the title to go there to read it.

It outlines the paradox of the final of the events we experience succumbing to our plight and the totality of the loss of what we were.

The article dwells on our penchant for things, stuff with which we identify, that seems to make us what we are. It concerns itself with whether or not it is better to seek the cooperation or push the need to give these things up. It balances the question wonderfully.

The article speaks of their questions those yet concerning themselves with us. Our separate question is this. How much of our things that become so involved in what we are have anything to do with who we are. It is in answering this question that that we learn our next step.

We are who we are. What we are can no longer function in this setting. So who we are has to take the next step into who we are becoming. We are becoming an even more vulnerable adult, growing more and more dependent on others simply to function.

It is my hope that in accepting the happening of this when it does, that acceptance gives me the insight to recognize all that is left to me is to love. Love those that do for me. Love what they do for me.

We have returned to infancy. The only difference is some of us have memory of what was.

Experience in Dementia World

There are times I hurt, immeasurably. It often is incident oriented. It prompts me to ask these questions: “Do I hurt myself? Is it my disease hurting? Do I see it all wrong?” I have no answer; I feel the pain of it intensely. All I can do is seek solace in coping with it.

This I pray:

Lord, let me take the suffering and bear the pain of it, transform it by love into blessings and grace, so we all of us so painfully affected by this disease can better transcend our Bitter World.

“Dementia World, the bitter place that it is, is the place where hearts break.” The only hope is that the breaking will find its way to becoming more open. So said the writer on another blog I follow. The writer went on to say:

And then I snapped out of it. I returned to Dementia World. Dementia World is a place where hearts break in order to more fully open. Dementia World is a place where the past and future do not exist. All we have is this moment, and the more loving we are with each other, the more we can live authentic lives.

Dementia World is a place where we all learn the meaning of love.

These words speak a universe. They are striking in the thoughtful way they personify a place where none of us would care to go, but some of us unfortunately landed there and have no way out!

It is numbing to every sense of us to find ourselves there. It neither is a place of hope nor does it have remission. It just keeps on going and its conditions worsen.

There is redemption nevertheless. It is found in the elixir of coping with the pain of it. We find the balm in the love of others, not in its having love, rather, in its giving of love to one another.

This is the wonderful, painful, rewarding, lonely life we are forced into here. These words define the moment of gain given by the loving without thought of return.

Another person commented on the post as follows:

You are making an enormously important choice here. Looking for the gift, looking for the "back story" of those who have hurt you..

If we can choose the frame through which we view things where coping feels impossible, we take back at least some of the essential sense of control. We CAN choose to look beyond our own experience, we CAN choose to care about others who are less caring about us than we wish, we CAN choose to forgive and move on. We CAN gather around us those who will understand, encourage, and support us in this struggle that is called life.

The foregoing describes the quality in the act of love in caretaking. The act of love in receiving that is of an entirely different character.

There is a grace in accepting the pain in the continuing loss produced in this Bitter World of Dementia; in recognizing and accepting your growing vulnerability. It is graceful to acknowledge the one giving their hand and heart to help. This raises this grace to blessing. As you limp your way through this Bitter World of Dementia holding the hand of love supporting you stop and realize this:

All the time the helper suffers too and suffers more! Not only the pain of your experience is suffered, the pain of all that has been lost and will never return is suffered even more!

The ability to receive and accept this love and support tendered gives transcendence not only to it but also to the quality of your love.

Try, Try and Try some more, It Worked Once, why not Again!

The singular method of attack of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is to find the chemical that will cure it, obliterate it and allow us to go back to life without it. This is the dream of all, with too few seeing the real world presented by the needs of those affected by AD. By affected I mean the AD person afflicted, their Caretakers and all their close loved ones.

We are a pill oriented, pill dominated bunch, who look no further than what can I take, or our medical profession who look for what can you take to deal with what ails you.

No thought less treatment is given the in-between. So much effort is expended by those favoring us to find money for the cure. So little done to ease the burden we have dealing with it. There is so much that can be done, so little considered and less put in place.

Why?

Do the powers managing the effort for us follow a hidden agenda, one that is for someone other than us? Are the programs designed to render aid such as institutional care, home care, alternative care serving those in need of it, or those financing it? Is the government interested in anything more than garnering votes or pandering to the lobbyists who pay them?

Why is there so little when so much more is needed? Why does all the help provided protect the intolerably high cost of it? Does anyone realize the financial burden faced by the growing number of families affected by this disease?

How can you fight the good will involved in seeking to cure it?

Throw in another factor. That is the human penchant to continue repeating a formula that worked once but is no longer working. The fear of taking a view contra to the way the mainstream sees it

We are doing all of this in the Search for the Cure, the futility of which continues unabated. Read the article I have posted today: Alzheimer's Therapeutics Reviewed by NeuroInvestment. Click on it to read it on my archive.

It is technical but to the point and makes the point:

A recalibration of what constitutes a comprehensive AD pipeline is required, which opens the door for therapeutics utilizing other mechanisms, such as those addressing tau, metal-binding, and neurotrophin-enhancement.

The goal of AD treatment may also warrant a reset, as sustaining function farther into the lifespan may be as useful, and more safely viable, than is the elusive goal of disease-modification. Programs which sustain functional autonomy more effectively could emerge from a host of cognitive enhancement targets; including nicotinic and/or muscarinic receptors, 5HT-6, and/or H3 antagonism.

AD World, Viewed from the Inside!

Wow, double wow, read the article. It is worth taking in the view. The view is that of the Caretaker, looking at both of us. It is accurate, candid; it says it like it is.

The Article is entitled: Alzheimer's Disease -- The Front Row by Bob De Marco first appearing 1-10-10, repeated 9-13-1o. Bob is the Mainstay at Alzheimer’s Reading Room which is well worth following daily. It is a treasure trove of material for us.

Read it on my Archive where it is posted to do so click on its title to go there. Alternatively click on Alzheimer’s Reading Room to there and find it as well as a chest of other jewels.

Bob is at his sensitive and perceptive best in this article. What he says speaks loudly and clearly for those of us afflicted with AD and those of us who are our caretakers. I am afflicted but cognitively able to see the plight and pain of my Caretaker Diane my wife. Hers experience shadows mine in comparison as is true for the life of all caretakers.

A few of the nuggets and gems in the article are as follows: (I use my descriptive words in their antonym case)

• Once Alzheimer's disease strikes, Alzheimer's caregivers get to witness the craziness that comes with Alzheimer's day in and day out.

• If you think it is disconcerting to see someone suffering from Alzheimer's for a few hours, a few days, or a week, think about what it might be like -- for every hour of every day for years.

• Most people give up trying to understand Alzheimer's disease. Why? Because Alzheimer's is difficult to think about.

• Unless you are an Alzheimer's caregiver it is difficult to understand or comprehend what it is like living in the front row. The behavior. The illness. The death sentence. Why are their so many empty seats?

• Alzheimer's disease turns the world of the caregiver upside down.

• Alzheimer's sufferers, as the disease progresses, lose the ability to forgive, apologize, or make-up.

• Alzheimer's robs the sufferer of the ability to think clearly, reason, and remember.

• Imagine being happy and then sad, caring then angry, focused then frustrated

• The illness -- the gradual or fast decline -- of the brain health of the person suffering from Alzheimer's, medical problems and set backs, financial problems, and the most gut wrenching of them all -- the realization that death is coming -- ugly death in many cases.

Read the article for more.

THE RANDOM RIGHT TO LIFE!

Ever stop to wonder this? Am I unique? Why am I here? Is there anywhere else, ever was or will be?

Deep huh? “I’ll turn the page as deal with this crap! I left my hip boots home today!

Add something more to this complicated mix. A Buddhist says “Don’t sweat it, it’s all illusion anyway!”

Then read the article by Dick Cavett taken from this morning’s New York Times entitled Dear Fellow Improbable… (Click the title to read it on my Archive)

On reading this then think about how random an event we truly are!

Is this significant? Yes it is in this respect:

As random as we may be we become more randomized by immuring ourselves in this timed space environment we know as life. We do this through a function (our minds) capable of accumulating, storing, remembering and organizing data as it comes to us from this unique universe we occupy. We remember it, sort it out and distinguish it. That is just our data machine at work.

We then kick in the analytic device known as our creative function that operates free of the mechanics of the data machine (also the mind). This part wonders about, compares the data, one datum to another, intuits the sense of it, imagines about it, and otherwise seeks to know it and apply other things known or wondered about it.

It is in this way that we, random, animal yet somewhat different, make use of our involvement of all we sense and see around us.

In doing this we become something different than that random event we were as we started. We start with the shell that we are. With our multi-talents included, we make something of us with the time, the space and the experience surrounding us.

This illusion, us, has two immutable features typical of its materiality, it begins and ends, Birth and Death are its boundaries. In the end, and it does end, we hopefully are better for the time spent and effort expended.

We begin one of all the random sperm that with the egg make us whom we are. We then intrude upon all that randomness given us and make something of this raw material about us. This becomes us and is our product at such time as we do an accounting of the time and effort spent here.

It’s Up To Us No Other!

The New Old Age column of the New York Times carried yet another significant article today after one so notably on the mark yesterday. Read it on my Archive by clicking on Living Together, Aging Together

We need it. We cannot afford not to do it! Sure as hell no one’s going to do it for us! Unless there is something in it for them to do it, to their benefit, at our expense, it will not see daylight.

In the society as we have become, we are expressly not our brother’s keeper.

Government has fallen short, now over the edge, it has fallen into the abyss of polarity, and gridlock. It has been financially put in place by lobbying interest groups.

Counterfeit help from entrepreneurial top heavy government and/or public association groups who maintain their own agenda at high cost to us is all there is. Their programs give lip service providing the appearance of help. Beyond that appearance what help they feign to give is in their way, at their terms having no thought to design directed to our benefit.

Our families are trying unsuccessfully. They are shackled by their own needs made so for the same reasons that have produced our plight.

Charitable and religious groups are overwhelmed. There is just too much needing to be done.

The ways and means to do it ourselves needs finding. This article, as the article yesterday on men & Communication focus on the problem at its root. We have acculturated ourselves as seniors into a corner where no one is there to help, no benefits preside, we are simply cornered there left alone in isolation.

Whad’ya think of them Vikes with that Favre, Hey!

In the New Old Age column the New York Times ran an article on Sept 8 entitled Men’s Group Gets Men Talking. It is posted on my Archive, click the name of the article to go there and read it. I posted it because of this:

It is wonderful to see this topic the subject of an article instead of the object of denial, pushing under the rug or in some other way not acknowledging it as a concern.

It tells us what we know but do not think about much. Men are lonely, particularly as they lose the social props of work, community standing and recognition from others for what they are. They are rarely recognized for who they are.

We are alone, lonely, do not have a clue on how to reach out if we are not part of a job, club, activity or other condition that does it for us. We do not communicate freely, we compete automatically and we hide who we are in the veneer of what we choose to appear.

Why is this?

We have short changed ourselves for the illusion of being in charge. As a result our acculturation from infancy up has been to be a MAN!

What is that? We don’t cry, we do not become caught up in feelings, we stay ahead of the other guy, we do not show our hand “no how.” We fill in the appearance of what we choose to be with the accoutrements of the generally accepted view of what that choice is. We then live and act in accord with our and the general view of what that is.

There is no opportunity in the style of presentation that we can show who we are let alone know who we are. That is the secret. It is so tightly held it soon becomes the secret to us as well. We act as we are supposed to act filling the role we do as we do it. Outside of the exercise of all “that person” we have chosen to become, we must say or do just that, show no more.

Our language of communication follows the lingua franca of our kind, the context and content of it, it is little more than ball scores, babes and current politics if that is safe, or conservative politics otherwise.

“What about them Vikes, Hey?” is more common here in Minnesota than “What do you think?” “I don’t feel right about that!” “How can I help you?”

We need to start on discovery of who we are unless we lose ourselves completely in this course of life. Our senior years are as good as any. They are actually better. It is here we are in Harvest Times. Our product is us within the framework of our lives. We have the insight and are in that cycle of our lives which enables us the opportunity to see and add it all up.

We can start that if we learn to talk to one another.

IN SEARCH OF A GOD

Atheist I am not. To an Agnostic I am close but cannot be. I am too hopeful. Religion too often seeks definition that answers. It does this rather then give answers that explain. A profound spiritual attitude seeks the answers and lets them explain what they mean. To this effort science is the handmaiden in the search by the spiritual.

I was never troubled by any conflict between religion and science. I saw them both framed in the plane of spiritual awe. On that plane search for a god is essentially asking “What’s it all about?” From that question comes the answer to help us understand. We comprehend from whatever answers more of what it is all about.

It is in this ask and answer process we experience by living our life that we learn in a gradual sort of way:

1. What we are about in this world
2. What significance it has in the greater order of things.

I could not find answer in religion. It limits itself by its own definition. This is true of most western kinds. Science in turn always struck this fascination with me. It is so easy for the Scientist to know a god. All she/he needs do is take the findings that step beyond those that are more than hypothesis, add them up, viola, there is their answer. Cause is always followed by effect!

This article Mystery and Evidence appearing by Tim Crane in the New York Times on Sept 5, 2010. (Click on the title to go to my Archive where it is posted) is so right in its conclusions. I add my own lifetime thoughts about the same subject in foregoing essay.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT, THEN SOME MORE THOUGHT!

An interesting article ran in the New Old Age column of today's New York Times. It merits reading about helping one another as a recent article in the times did by the same author of the Times I carried in my Archive a short time ago. We owe it. We don't do it, we don't look out for one another.

This in incompatible with our most basic humanity which is being part of this life to communicate with each other thereby helping each other. This seems to me to be the fundamental purpose of this life.

We find ourselves here functioning in all ways contrary to servicing this basic need we have. Why? There are reasons, the answers for which I have only discovered late in life. Were I to put it succinctly, I have lived to overcome myself and commit to helping others. There is no other way. I have nonetheless done every thing I could to avoid this obligation until I life brought me to my knees giving me no other choice.

Having regard for the singular question of what we need to do for one another that we are not doing is addressed in the article I have posted entitled: Coordinating Help for a Neighbor in Need Click on it to go to my Archive and read it.

My thoughts about the why of this is as follows:

Today our communities are spare of communication. Life is patterned behind the closed door, the anonymity of the hallway, the elevator, the parking area, the enclosure of your car and the intense isolation you utilize to perform in your office, on the job site or whatever it is that occupies your day. Your family is far-flung, relatives generally remote, unless you are blessed with family that needs the feel of the contact of one another.

Our communication and pastime is singularly separated. We spend our downtime in front of the TV Eye mindlessly mesmerized, on the net or cell phone connecting by messaging, being part of the world in Facebook, or on Twitter.

Growing up you are not on your own most of the time. First there is Working Mom, Nanny, Day Care and Cartoons. Then it is school, Little League, or some other over organized, over scheduled “Participation Sport” in which you cannot excel, are taught rather to enjoy the action in the event.

We are then acculturated into early adulthood. Men are honed to delegated Bread Winner, Women the Nurturer, community is the partnership of the man and woman raising a family or by the two of them simply surviving the onslaught of all the others.

Life is dedicated to immediate family or partnership, serving the roles to provide security, comfort sustenance and sanctuary for the time the children need in order to repeat the process or the partners live out their days together.

Throughout this Rite of Passage friends and associations are made from the particular activity that is shared, whether at work, worship, parents of children’s friends or socially efficacious for maintaining standing and identity in whatever community surrounds.

This life is not given to connecting casually and growing in intimacy of just anyone else who happens to be around. We maintain our enclosure unless there is personal purpose or profit in connection.

We ask only what do I need to do to protect what I have, or get ahead of the other person? We don’t ask beyond the confines to which we are obligated “What do you need, what can I do for you?”

This is our style of life that calls on means not now found when we need help from beyond the shelter of the isolated sphere into which we have structured our lives. It is hard to do. It exposes us to the undue risk incumbent in contact with strangers. It frustrates both our families and ourselves in how to adequately provide for us in those vulnerable times in which we need help.

When man in acculturated to defend, protect and safely secure, it is difficult to face the world that the rest of us are.

This is why we must find different and better ways to be as continue to compete with one another for progress. That is why it makes such sense to form as communities, equipped with the style of social function and technological prowess we have to competently form a way of “Coordinating Help for a Neighbor in Need.”

Stay Home Friday Night? Are You Crazy, It’s Friday Night!

Go out tonight, Friday night, any other night? Do we really have to? So says my age within the ambit of my experience. Where we once craved action we know crave respite, and more than that we crave routine!

I have Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) diagnosed more than four years ago. AD abruptly transforms your life making it repressively different.

The transformation is akin to passing through a Chrysalis. Before you were a worm, an organism bound to ground. You are caught up by all the other things on the ground around you.

After the Chrysalis you are a butterfly able to soar and reach far heights. All that is above you and between you and the ground gain in importance and give insight.

AD is repressively different in the many terrible changes that take place. The progress of the disease is the worst. Too many losses and limitations complicate it horribly.

As a by-product of aging it is nonetheless transforming in a transcendent sort of way.

This is aptly described in the New Old Age report entitled Aging’s Misunderstood Virtues in the New York Times on 8-30-10 It is worth reading it. I have posted it on my Archive. Click on the title to go there.

There certainly is Cosmic Transcendence that becomes more real each step of the way if your mind stays open. Taking the foundational groundwork of beginning to understand what your own life has been about, your worm life; you now as a butterfly begin to see how it fits into the greater whole. You begin to understand you are part of the dynamic we know as Cosmos.

I am so happy being able to know where I have been, why, having a pretty good concept of where it is taking me. Much went into getting to this point in my 73 years. The four year old kick start slamming through me, produced by my diagnosis of AD, focused my mind view into seeing what it is all about! In this way AD it has been my Chrysalis. It made me a Butterfly!

Within the purview of the new view, that of the butterfly, it all adds up! It explains all of that time spent on the ground wallowing in the vision and objects giving it such importance. We believe it to be all there is, all that is known. That includes all of its false starts, failed finishes and incomplete undertakings. Its frustration becomes understandable only in understanding there is more to living than meets the eye of the Worm.

Once in the air that importance that existed with each pass of the worm seems purposeful. It occurs when you have the oversight to see it from the air. Being the Worm led to the flight of the Butterfly. It is the Butterfly’s that makes the way of the worm worth it.