Hello Fierce Ones,
I’m pleased to announce the next selection of the Conscious Aging Book Club: John C. Robinson’s book The Three Secrets of Aging: A Radical Guide,. My blog inspired by the book “My First Real Vacation” follows.
The discussion board opens today in the comment section below the blog and culminates October 4 both online and in-person at 10:30 a.m., Parnassus Books, Nashville. This will give you plenty of time to read the book if you are interested.
Meanwhile, a reminder that our current selection is The Gift of Years by Joan Chittister. The discussion is currently underway HERE and culminates next Thursday, September 6 both online and in-person at 10:30 a.m., Parnassus Books, Nashville.
To learn more about the Conscious Aging Book Club, click HERE.
–Carol Orsborn, Older, Wiser, Fiercer
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MY FIRST REAL VACATION
As my summer of classic blogs draws to a close today, I return to my desk having had the first true vacation of my life. Dan and I had a great time driving from Nashville to Portland, Maine. But if you ask me what I “did”, I don’t recall. The entire span of time was pure, transcendent pleasure and if there weren’t a few photos of Dan and myself feasting on lobsters, there would be no record of what actually transpired. In the words of my favorite mystic John C. Robinson, it was “as if God suddenly sharpened my vision, making every detail of reality incredibly vivid and distinct. My immediate existence was brighter, clearer, more alluring, and absolutely perfect just as it is.”
This is new for me, not that I haven’t had amazing vacations in the past. But each and every one previously served some important function—providing perspective, time to journal about my life, engage in deep conversation with Dan about decisions pressing upon us and changes we hoped to make.
But not this time. This is the first time that even though I’m back home and into my routines, the sense of still being on the first vacation of my life hasn’t yet come to an end. I’m sitting here—even now—writing this blog with the exact same sense of simple joy with which I cracked open the trip’s first lobster claw. Of course, it is only 8 a.m. and we all know that altered states cannot be counted on to last forever. That said, re-reading John C. Robinson’s book The Three Secrets of Aging: A Radical Guide, the Conscious Aging Book Club’s October selection, I wonder.
In it, John writes: “One day it dawned on me: This emptying of consciousness is part of aging! If we enter the state of quiet simplicity and mindfulness potentially available in our late-life experience, that is, if we resist the temptation to continue or recreate all the hectic craziness of the middle years, then self and its various identities, lose their appeal and hold on consciousness, and the whole psychological complex of ‘me’ begins to dissolve. What’s left is consciousness itself.”
This dissolution of “self” into what John describes as a mystical union with the divine is not pain-free—in fact, in explaining how he experienced his passage through “initiation, transformation and revelation”, he writes that “The journey was not easy. In fact it was incredibly painful. And it only happened because I was defeated again and again—identity, self and the illusory world all had to cave in. But each time I step into Heaven on Earth, I feel as if I have won the biggest jackpot in the world…the jackpot of spiritual freedom.”
Six years ago, before reading John ‘s book for the first time, I had thought of spirituality as a useful tool with which to address the problems of aging that were beginning to pile on me. John’s book was the first to raise the possibility for me that aging was not a problem to be solved, but rather, in and of itself, holds the potential to be a spiritual, even mystical, experience. The erosion of ego, the marginalization, the losses—all those things that we so dread about aging turn out to be the very means of our deliverance: the thinning of the veil between our efforts to maintain the illusion of control and merger with divine consciousness. John, a psychologist, minister and self-avowed mystic writes: “In a consciousness without thought, sensing the Presence everywhere, my world becomes unbelievably beautiful, saturated with holiness, and infinitively precious …burdens, struggles and goals dissolve and I am home again.”
I had not yet heard of John six years ago—knew nothing about him or his book when it arrived unsolicited in the mail. And I admit, I vacillated throughout the first reading between wanting what he had and wondering what he was on. But John anticipated a reaction like mine. He writes: “I appreciate that many will still find the Heaven on Earth to be an inconceivable and perhaps even ridiculous idea despite my best efforts to describe and explain it. Still, this is what I have found…I have come home. You can, too.”
So, dear friends. Here I am, home again, writing about my vacation, John’s book and aging as a mystical experience, and assuming that you may have as many questions about this state of consciousness John describes as I. I’m glad we’ve got each other—and John’s radical book—to talk it through together.
Please visit the comment section below where I have posed some questions to jump-start the conversation.
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Please support our local independent book stores, and to order your book club books from Parnassus Books, click HERE
To order The Three Secrets of Aging, click HERE
To learn about the Conscious Aging Book Club, click HERE
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TO START OR JOIN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS BLOG AND BOOK: You are encouraged to share your thoughts with me and our community at the bottom of this blog as it is posted below at CarolOrsborn.com.
