Immortality

Joseph Campbell gave a liberating explanation regarding the all too human desire for immortality. He said that our longing for physical immortality is mistaken for what is really a desire for spiritual enlightenment. This implies that deep within our psyches is a longing to have a forever connection with something greater and more lasting than physical life. The longing for spiritual immortality mistakenly gets interpreted as a need to stay alive in our physical form through eternity. Perhaps this is why so many people strive for eternal youth. Our culture is obsessed with youth. Plastic surgery and the proliferation of youthful and immature attitudes and behaviors has become so commonplace as to seem to be normal and even healthy. Aging to many brings a sense of shame. How pathetic that one should grow older. How ugly and unnecessary it is. Yet aging offers the opportunity for a wisdom and peace of mind never conceived by the young. Those who continually strive for the look and behavior of youth are never happy and must continually worry about each new evidence of aging. It is not better to see your life as being the ever present opportunity for spiritual awakening through the process of aging? Is not your immortality the awareness and connection with that which is within you that never dies? If you have not found it, seek it with all your might. It will serve you better than the folly of chasing physical immortality.