Vol.
1 Issue 4, Winter 1997
Movement -
Aging - Patterns
by Bill Schaefer
Ah, this eternal, infernal movement. Source of mystery, creator of paradox, movement seems to be the unending focus of our conscious mind. We never seem to tire of examining the motion. We examine the movement and identify the results of the motion - change.
Movement and change. Often the two are so intertwined we cannot separate one from the other. Movement is the energy which creates the change. Movement is mother/father to change. The prerequisite for movement is the tension created between opposites - yin and yang, darkness and light, beginning and end.
Change keeps us off balance. We perceive change. Altered reality creates imbalance. To re-establish balance we must adapt to the change. As we adapt to the perceived change, the motion continues and makes our adaptation obsolete almost before we accomplish it.
Our perception is of an endless process of becoming.
In the examination of the process, we discover that the movement/change integration creates patterns. If we study the myriad, interlocking patterns, we begin to see an underlying sameness which embodies them all - a basic, universal pattern. We see it in our personal life cycle, in the history of the cosmos, even in the vibrations which we perceive as sound and interpret as words. Everywhere we look we see the pattern. It can be seen , examined and understood.
The pattern begins with conception ( the movement of beginning), involves a period of growth, reaches a moment defined by eastern teachers and philosophers as effulgence (moment of maximum growth), then enters a stage of deterioration, and ends with death ( which can be experienced as rebirth or conception). It is a pattern upon which all change is based. It is the pattern upon which motion plays its universal game. It is the context within which we live our moment.
Understanding this universal pattern - finding ways to adapt our perception and will to the reality of the pattern - is a critical need in the struggle to experience a life moment (cycle) that is in balance and fulfilled. It is a most important need when trying to understand and adapt to the aging process.
During the period of our life which precedes effulgence (conception and growth) our attention is appropriately focused on our expanding horizons. Our growth continues with a momentum we have no reason to believe will abate. Past the moment of effulgence, however, our physical experience is unalterably changed. How we deal with the change will have a major impact on the remainder of our life.
For most of us, our first reaction is one of denial. Our culture encourages it; our fear empowers it. Some of us remain within denial for the rest of our life. The denial is based on a need to hide from the ever-changing reality in the hope that denial will be less painful. Unfortunately the pain is not only greater because of the denial, but it becomes almost impossible to heal since we effectively block out the reason for the pain. the pain increases as the denial continues, but we can no longer identify the source. We assign the pain and the resulting fear and anger to what is happening in the moment. This mistake not only generates confusion but increases the pain/fear/anger.
The solution, of course, is to identify the real problem - living with the reality of deterioration and death. Once identified the struggle to create balance and acceptance begins.
For many of us the , the attempt to identify and understand the reality of our own deterioration and death generates our first real experience with the universal pattern. We begin to see our personal conception/growth/effulgence/deterioration/death pattern as it interacts with, responds to, and effects identical patterns in the external world.
To understand our own patterns, to live fully and in balance within it. we need to examine and learn from the patterns around us. Recognizing not only the inevitability of deterioration and death in the external world but also the continuity and regeneration of the movement, we begin to adapt to the reality of the pattern.
The foundation of our responsibility, our control, is preparation and letting go. As we grow in our understanding of the pattern, we give ourselves permission to live through the pain of the multitude of deterioration’s and deaths we experience in our life. We stop denying. We live through the darkness to the regeneration.
In that process, we learn to anticipate and prepare for new periods of deterioration and death. Even the understanding that many of the losses cannot be anticipated brings the possibility of preparation for the unknown.
The key to preparation seems to be letting go. Balance is maintained or rediscovered, as we stop struggling to hold onto that which is finished and, in the midst of pain and darkness, struggle to let go. Grasping - holding on, directing our energy towards continued attachment - only increases the pain and delays the regeneration.
As the power to allow deterioration and death without inappropriate resistance grows, we discover new insights into the universal pattern.
The power of the darkness - of deterioration and death- is transitory. We need not hide from it. Neither do we need to pretend that passing through it, since we understand is inevitability, is without pain. We do not see ourselves as being weak because we cry, because we rage. We experience it in the moment. and the moment passes.
But the insight is more profound than that. If the deterioration and death we experience are transitory, there is another truth. The birth - the regeneration - is also transitory. The light, as we experience it in this earth-earthy, motion-powered universe/cosmos, is only a transitory allegory of something more.
If we try to hold onto the light as we experience it here, we fail. We can experience it in the moment, but the moment passes, and inevitably the new moment brings with it deterioration and death - the darkness. We discover that attachment to the light, as we experience it, brings the same pain and distress as resistance to the darkness.
In the playing out of our moment, we cannot either keep the darkness from coming or so immerse ourselves - attach ourselves - to the light that it will not slip away. The balance is created and maintained only when we let go of our attachment to our limited experience of light.
Together our liberation from resistance to the darkness and our unattachment to the light create an environment where we can truly experience the regeneration, the growth, the effulgence. It is an environment where we can truly value the light because we spend no time trying to hold on to it.
In that environment we begin to see, in a very pragmatic way, the need to look beyond the movement for the wholeness we crave. In the full experience of the light, without attachment to it, we see the direction. It is inward/outward. It is transcendental. Yet it is accessible, grounded in the reality our experience - our moment.
It is in the playing out of that universal pattern that the opportunity for wholeness comes. It is our birthright. It is our birth responsibility . It is the only way home. Our consciousness, so addicted, so enthralled by the movement, can have the experience of the whole. The paradox, of course, is that we can have the experience only if we do not grasp, do not attach. It is in the act of letting go, in the midst of the terrible feeling that we will never be whole, that we make the experience possible. And it is in the experience that we do not have to become whole. We already are.
Our life then is not simply tied to the pattern. Aging becomes not simply progressive losses in preparation for death but a part of our moment that allows the remembrances and the experiences of being whole.. In that integrated moment there is peace, true expression of love, and freedom.
I wish that moment for us all.
Reprinted from Sena Magazine, September 1990 . Copyright©Bill
Schaefer, 1990-1997 All rights reserved.
Next
 We
always appreciate feedback. Let us know what you think - send us email! Occasionally we may publish a response we get in our email, so if you do not want your email published, please say so.
Graphic by Maxfield Parrish, "Daybreak" Sena Foundation..."Sharing the Seasons"™since
1985
|
