Thursday, April 16, 2015

The Coherent Road to Conscious Aging



Have you ever been working on making a spiritual leap or wanted to understand something deep, only to notice that life has already just thrown it at you so you could actually see it, feel it and have your answer before you ask?This seems to be the way I learn, or the way life has decided to teach me.
Case in point. I love looking at aging as a new frontier: I think most people are so shocked by what aging does to us and takes from us, no one is driving the car--everyone (mostly) is looking backwards at what was, or trying like crazy to seem like it doesn't phase them.

I am shocked too with a body that doesn't work or look like it used to, the loss of family members... But something in me insists that life IS intelligent and that there IS something else happening here. There's got to be scenery, depth, feeling, mystery, good new stuff we couldn't even imagine when we were thirty.

So, I have an Excited!About Aging site where I post anything I find on great aging, and a website to teach creativity as an aging-well tool. I even teach Art Classes for Alzheimer's. But I want something more-- it feels like I am still outside the theater wanting to go in, but not finding the door. Or the dance that leads to the door and opens it.

Enter IONS wonderful program called Conscious Aging. I read about it and knew I had to become a facilitator--that way I'd have a front row seat to the transformation that happens when we are awake and conscious to life's amazing aging tango. I signed up. Got the materials,just knowing in my heart that I am going to love this. Which I do. I will be facilitating this remarkable workshop on excavation and new life skills in a few months.

And of course, this means doing the workbook myself and reaching out to create opportunities and community to do the workshop. Slowly doubts creep up, can I do this well? (push it down) Can I really make the contacts that will welcome this program? (stuff the thought away, I'm busy learning how to facilitate Conscious Aging).

And so it goes. I do have a toolbox of processes to see what's going on inside and I use them often, but it is seeming like a bother in this context. I'm so juiced by the program and busy learning it.

Then of course it hits me like a brick wall. I don't want to feel what's going on. I want to pass go and collect my $200. I don't really want to be conscious of my fears, feelings of doubt, unforgiveness, shyness, lack of compassion toward myself while I learn to teach Conscious aging! Boy the joke is on me!

Life, in its astounding intelligence, is making sure I learn all about the chapters of conscious aging NOW, before I teach it. Self Compassion, Forgiveness toward self and others. Reaching out to others and telling the truth. Feeling what's going on and naming it. Understanding that death creates life. Letting a new vision of aging find you.

This facilitator, at least, will be well versed in all of these hard areas before she runs the program. I would even say it's not possible for me to teach the program as who I am right now. Life wants me to be that future person who has done the work. I love it. Life in action, making us do the work, to become fully coherent as we hold the space for folks to get conscious about aging. I'm happy to play the fool and bow once again to how great life it, just doing its thing, all by itself.