Are you over fifty? Sixty? Seventy? Eighty? Or beyond? What do you think about? Do you even notice what you ponder? Few people like to age and like the attending losses that accompany aging. But here is a perspective that may put the experience of aging in a better light. As an aging psychotherapist and hypnotherapist in Encinitas, California I deal with aging and the losses of aging with my own experience and with the aging of others. Using psychotherapy and hypnotherapy as daily tools to explore the psyche and relationships of others I am willingly compelled to access my intuition, my emotions, and my mind to help guide and problem solve. In short I have thought, felt, and intuited a lot about aging. So I ask these questions: What is aging? What can we look forward to? Why did God create such a circumstance? How can we make the best of what we cannot control? How many times have I asked these questions? It seems like thousands of times. So here is my today’s response to these questions.
We are not our bodies. Our bodies are on loan to our soul-selves. You, me, everyone is a soul. We, our soul, take on a physical form that is meant to be temporary for a very specific reason: this place is not our home. You have heard the saying, “Home is where the heart is.” In truth home is were the soul is and our final home is where our bliss is, known to some as God, spirit, heaven, the timeless self, and perhaps thousands of other designations for the same thing.
So what can we think about as we age? We can think about who we really are as souls. Our body slowly or sometimes not so slowly declines toward death. And then we die. This need not be seen as tragedy but instead as an opportunity to reflect upon and perhaps miraculously and joyfully realize who we really are. We can focus on what is next as our soul travels beyond human life in a physical body into something even more wonderful. An adventure if you will. And I do hope you will consider this as an adventure. I implore you not to waste time in complaining and self-pity. Yes, we are losing our youth. Yes, we are experiencing many losses large and small. Yet to focus too long on these losses is an even more precious loss: time to realized who we are. So grieve your losses but don’t stay there. Realize that you are a soul, not a physical body. Your body is and has been the wonderfully generous temporary home for your soul-self. Now for just a moment shift your focus from your body to what is invisible but palpable: your soul. Feel its existence within you. Use your intuition. Focus within. You can feel it. You know you are in touch with your soul-self when you begin to feel an uprising of joy. That is who you really are. Now that’s something to think, and feel, about as we age.