Conscious Aging

Watching my parents die was one of the most difficult and painful experiences of my life. It was a modern-day tragedy, their suffering both heartbreaking and unnecessary.  I watched, powerless to change a sickness of the mind, a fundamental commitment to their powerlessness.

We are all powerless over death, but we are not powerless over the way in which we approach our death.  As we choose better thoughts and attitudes, we begin to see them come to fruition with each choice we make.

At the time of my parent’s death, I was only beginning to grasp this concept. The fog was lifting but it was too late for me to help them. I was still in the grip of the lineage of powerlessness, even as I knew in my gut  that there was a different way. We are all products of our upbringing. For some, however, a victim mindset is woven tightly into our unconscious and is a part of our DNA, put there before we even had a choice.

MY HEART ACHED

My heart ached as I watched this mindset play out in the two people I was born loving.  I watched in horror as they brought about the very conditions they feared and dreaded far in advance. They lived their worst nightmare, and lived their dying days watching everything they planned so meticulously to avoid play out just as they had envisioned it.

It wasn’t their physical suffering that was hard to watch, minimal compared to many.  No, it was the unspoken and fundamental belief that they didn’t matter; that only they could save themselves and at this they would ultimately fail thereby proving their worthlessness.  In the end they lived their last years fighting a sense of hopelessness and helplessness.  Each, individually, unable to break free from the mindset that could not create the way out.

I HAD TO BREAK FREE

It was then that I began to grapple in earnest with my own unanswered questions about life and death.  Untangling the mindset that created a lineage of mental and emotional suffering was my single goal. I would separate out what was mine and what was theirs and do everything in my power to break the chains that bound me and those loving, kind and generous human beings that came before me.

I sought then and continue to seek today a deeper, richer understanding of and appreciation for the life/death experience.  In the last decade since their death some progress has been made. The transformation process has taken me from a place of fear to a whole new place. I’m still growing in my understanding of it. Every day is a practice and a lesson to walk between two worlds and not neglect either. Once begun, this transformation process continues until the day we die, but it s a gift of our times here and now. A shift is taking place and the work we do will advance the progress.

If I had a choice. I did not want to die as they died, nor do I want to live as they lived.  I’ve always wanted something different, even before I knew what it was. Of course, I have yet to test my new perspective at the time of death. In the meantime I will continue on, allowing the progression to continue to take place. In some very real sense I feel that I am doing it for them as well.

During my fifth decade, I discovered a deeper connection to myself and to the creation of all things. I am unwilling to name the source without source. To do so is, for me, too confining, too limiting, and subject to false interpretations. Yet, I feel a powerful presence, an energy upon which love and life and all that is good is founded and sustained. This power lives within us, between us,  around us and before us. When we open to it, our path becomes clearer and the way opens up before us. It is both me and not me. It is both the collective and not the collective.

I will never know what crossed my mother or father’s mind in their last moments. Perhaps they took the hand of their God and were no longer afraid. I hope that was true. Since that time, however, I have vowed not to live an un-lived life and not to die a meaningless death. Conscious aging is my goal and conscious living my ongoing quest.

© Dorothy Sander 2015