Flip the Script on Aging
Week Nine: Flip the Script: Aging
Day Fifty-seven: December 27, 2023
Before we come into physical incarnation, we are the not yet born, and after birth we are the living on earth, where we reside for a time of trial, learning, and initiation. This often involves pain, loss, and suffering. At the end of this life, we die and return home, first resting in an in-between place called limbo in the Judeo-Christian tradition and bardo in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, meaning, “in between island.” In Aramaic, the word for death literally translates as not here, present elsewhere. ~Carolyn North, Worldshift Happens!
When we talk about aging, most of us probably think about people who are sixty or older, as if aging begins then. The truth is that the minute you were born, you began the process of aging. Your body grows, your clothes no longer fit you, and you outgrow things like your car seat, bed, and toys.
Flipping the script around aging is to begin to understand that aging is not just related to a certain decade. There is a beauty and challenge in each decade and appreciating that brings a richness and power. There are things that bring us comfort and things that bring us discomfort.
Honoring aging as a process that begins at birth can bring a reverence to the gifts of each age, each decade, each cycle and let go of the narrative that makes “aging” this thing to avoid. We are all going to live in a body that we will discard in death and embracing an appreciation of the process might help us all enjoy it a bit more.
Our ability to see and understand aging relates to our ability to embrace change, embrace discomfort, embrace death.
My belief is that we each have a soul that comes into a body that is our vehicle for our current lifetime. We have multiple lives in different bodies and a soul grows because of the experiences we have while in a body with an integration period in between lives.
This is the context of where I begin a conversation with you around flipping the script on aging.
Here are more words from Carolyn North’s book: Worldshift Happens! Facing down the Fear, Waking up the Mind, where she shares views of life and death from different cultures.
The Mojave people of the Mojave Desert in the American West refer to reincarnation as an “unending circle.” To one West African people, the word for reincarnation is the same word as for a vine spiraling up around the stalk. To the Buddhist, we are on a turning wheel of birth and rebirth.
The doctrine of reincarnation was historically accepted in most cultures of the world, including the early Judeo-Christian teachings. In the books of the Qabbala, the ancient mystical doctrines of the Jewish faith received by Moses on Mount Sinai, the transmigration of souls is an intricate intrinsic part of the system. This can be traced through the Zohar of the first century, then later in the Talmud and finally in the Old Testament.
Let’s begin our conversation around aging by reflecting on the circle of life. A beginning, an ending, a beginning, an ending, a beginning, an ending…
Each day, there will be reflections on the gifts and challenges from different decades of life.
Day 57 Prompts:
· What do you believe about life and death?
· Do you believe in reincarnation?
· What do you think about aging as something that happens from the minute you are born or is aging something that happens later in life?
· How does that flip the script on the word and beliefs around aging?
· In your culture or spiritual or religious beliefs, what are your views on death?
To read all 100 days of Flip the Script, go to Medium: https://andreahylen.medium.com/