A Larger Sense of Life

"What better vocation could there be for any part of the Kingdom than to restore it to the perfect integration that can make it whole?" -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 5, Section II, 10:9

I have had several friends pass over the last ten years.  At 61, I'm at the age where such things seem to become more common.  At the recent passing of a professional colleague, I commented to a friend, with absolute honesty, that a part of me was 'jealous.'  My friend replied, "You mean you want to die?"  I didn't reply.  What to say to a question like that?  I wanted to say, "No, I simply long for a larger sense of Life."  But I suspected my words would not make sense to those who are still identified with a body and the limitations that appear to be part of such identification.

I watch my beloved grandchildren expand in Life.  They move naturally, fairly effortlessly from a limited beginning in a body that is apparently helpless, into toddler antics, to grade school exploration, to middle school angst, to high school where one's peers are one's world.  Then on to college and a larger sense of life and self.  But as we age, we tend to over-identify with the limitations that make up each expansion.  So that it seems like dying when we move on... and on... always moving toward the remembrance of the Self that has no limits and no boundaries, no separate sense at all.

I was watching a movie about a man with Alzheimer's, and his big fear was that he could no longer remember who he had been in his life, and to him that was worse than death.  We cling to memories and achievements, and even failures, as if they somehow define us.  And we tend to diagnose people with the longing to move beyond all of that with either depression (i.e., they have no 'will to live' or 'no purpose anymore.'), or Alzheimer's (i.e., they can't remember the story anymore, and so they scare those of us who still cling to the story of who we are).  Now my mother (who passed last year), had circulatory dementia, which is very similar to Alzheimer's.  But the thing is, when she just relaxed and could just BE, she was happy.  It was only when the fear of not knowing gripped her that she struggled, got angry, and fought those who tried to help. Part of her was longing for a larger sense of Self... but the conditioned, identified mind fought desperately to maintain itself.  That is suffering... fighting to keep an illusion.  Peace is seeing that only illusions can be lost.

In India, it used to be traditional for retired men and women to renounce the world and become sannyasins.  The feeling was that they had performed their duty to the world and their families, and now the rest of their life would be dedicated to seeking the true Self.  I've always thought I would do that one day... but a friend who was reading this post just commented that I've been doing that for years.  Well.  Longing for a larger sense of Self is not new for this grandmother. :-)) 

But seriously, our culture only values growing older with the same values we had when we were younger.  More money or less money, the message is the same... pursue pleasure and the maintaining of the body.  Find hobbies or family to obsess about.  Anything to keep one safely limited to the belief that life is the body and the memories it stores.  The expansion to a larger sense of Life is feared and avoided at all costs. 

I have noticed lately that all suffering is always about clinging to some limitations (mental or physical) that I have  come to identify as 'me' or 'mine'.  And all happiness comes from allowing my Awareness to expand beyond such identifications.  Now this is nothing new.  But seeing it, really seeing it, has been liberating for me. 

As my longing for a larger sense of Life becomes the defining motivation for living, I begin to see that this longing IS the only motivation for Life.  It was only my identification with limits rather than Reality that kept me from noticing.  I see it in my grandchildren, in my children, in the political posturing and name-calling.  I see it in those who worship their bodies and obsess about exercise and diet.  I see it in those who seem to succeed and in those who seem to fail.  I see it in those who seem to be friends and in those who seem to be foes.  I see that there is One Life.  And the longing for that larger awareness of the Self that IS Life, is EVERYWHERE, ALWAYS. 

"Those who see themselves as whole make no demands." --A Course in Miracles; Workbook 37, 2:7