By Jim Selman | Bio
The 1970s in the USA may not have been the ‘Age of Enlightenment’, but it was certainly the ‘Age of the Pursuit of Enlightenment’. The Esalen Institute was in its hey day, the est training was blowing everyone’s mind, and authentic Indian yogis were in demand. We thought the Age of Aquarius was really here and that peace and love were just a few years away.
Maybe we were naïve, but it was a good time when young people were trying hard to be better people and
By Shae Hadden | Bio
Believers in the Law of Attraction, take heed! If you are afraid, don’t try to resist your fear. If you do, then you will give more power to it and end up attracting what you are afraid of. I know. I’ve just experienced my worst fear: of being very sick, alone, and uncertain about what is happening.
The interesting thing was that, when I was most afraid, immersed in physical pain and emotional stress, I decided to surrender my fear, my pain and my life to that ‘Higher
Over the past couple of years, I have been growing in my appreciation of just about everything and everyone in my life. I am living most of the time in an almost sublime state of acceptance and gratitude. Fears about the future have somehow disappeared. My work is more satisfying than at any time I can recall and, by all accounts, is more impactful.
When I began this inquiry about aging almost 30 years ago, my vision was that the end of life should have as much possibility as the beginning—that
I heard someone remark that the best thing about getting older is they don’t have to be afraid anymore. While I think that is one of life’s ‘truisms’, it falls into the same category as your mother telling you “not to worry”—it doesn’t help much to know that when you are worried! From what I can see, most people get more fearful and anxious as they age. This anxiety takes various forms: fear of not having enough money, fear of being homeless, fear of being alone, fear of becoming
By Rick Fullerton | Bio
For much of my life, I have had a private conversation about dying. It began as a young child, probably triggered by overhearing my parents talking about people fighting cancer or other scary diseases. When I was 12 and our family doctor knocked on the schoolroom door, my first thought was that he had figured out I was going to die. I was shocked to discover he had come to tell me my father had died of a heart attack at just 53. I was devastated! Our family survived, mainly due to the strength and resourcefulness of my mother, along with a supportive extended family and local community. As for me, I learned to deal with my fears mainly through my internal conversations. Never as I child did I talk about this secret and only rarely in later life. Yet looking back, it is possible to see how this fear of dying influenced many of my life decisions and shaped the person I am today.I
got married when I was 21—much too young according to my Aunt Laura!
But my wife and I were anxious to get on with raising a family. No time
to waste seeing the world or pursuing idle interests! In those days of
single incomes and stay-at-home moms, my role was clear and I was
determined to provide for my family. Duty called!
As life’s
milestones passed, my conversations about dying changed. At 30, I was
apparently in perfect health—no evidence of cancer,
By Kay Costley-White
A lot is written these days about aging gracefully. As we approach our senior years, we also become aware of a vague dread: we don’t want to acknowledge our fear of dying.Evolution, while fitting us
with an urgent will to survive and multiply, also equipped us with a
powerful, instinctive fear of death. It is perfectly normal and natural
to have a strong aversion to anything to do with it. Many people end
their lives without ever addressing the issue. But if we choose to open
up to this part of our genetic makeup, what is it really about? Does it
relate to the course of illness leading to the body’s demise,
I visited my Mother this week. She is 87 and not well. A lifetime of smoking has caught up with her and she is fighting emphysema every day. For the first time in a while, I came face to face with the reality that she is dying. Her comment to me is that “I don’t mind dying but don’t like dying this way”. These thoughts aren’t about not smoking, although as an ex-smoker, it is remarkable how that addiction can warp our judgment. My mother continues smoking to this day—now protesting
By Vincent DiBianca
Bio
A year or so ago, a few colleagues and I started to write a book
about the second half of life and how people could live a full and
fulfilling life until the day they die.
The treatise was that, in many ways, the second half could clearly
surpass the quality of experiences in the first half. I saw in my own
life and those around me profound examples of people 40 and older
reinventing their careers, physical condition and relationships.
Although I ran