Let Us Do the Celestial Dance

At one time in the history of our culture, most of the time in the history of many eastern cultures  as well as currently, and in many cultures of less developed countries, the old are venerated. They are known to be the wise ones, the ones who have thought it all out. They are the ones from whom to seek advice.

We do so because we know: They have been there; they have seen it all; they have thought it over; they know better; the accolades could go on and on. We seek them out to just listen or be directed by their advice.

They are the ones with Wisdom.

Wisdom bears many definitions in the many dictionaries. The one I like is this: The ability to make a decision based on the combination of knowledge, experience, and intuitive understanding.

Wisdom has to do with what I write in the essay entitled: We Join the Grand Celestial March. I have posted it in my Archive. Click on the title to go there to read it.

In that essay I discuss the penchant we have in that last stage of our lives to quit the frantic pace to acquire, to be someone, to live as we deem we ought to. It is the time for us to relax, smell the daisies and count it all up.

It is the time to start asking: Was there meaning in where I was? Was there purpose in what I did, or did I abuse all the time and talent I had in the first and the second stage? The answer to these questions is "no way!" We did what we were supposed to do, what this unseen force prompted us to do each step of the way. What we did was good.

In the first stage we learned how to survive in this very different mode of life. In no other dimension have we known the limitations inherent in occupying space as we pass through time. In no other dimension have we been blind to who we really are.

We seem to be so committed to first, surviving, and then making the best of the talents we have. Doing so as we are driven or programmed to do this; doing so we lose sight of the bigger picture. That bigger picture is comprised of our consciousness. It is our consciousness that existed before and will continue to exist after this life.

This material consequence of time and space demonstrate another constraint viz: We are born, we live, until we die. That is all there is to life. Our existence in the plane starts, runs its course,  quickly and absolutely terminates.

It is this Fact of Life that gives the importance to that third stage. That importance is to reflect, review what life has been about, determine where it should take us and include in that view more than the eye can see in this life.

There is enough for each of us to look at, if we choose. It is within us to make some judgment about its purpose. It is particularly within our power to see and understand the consequences of this complicated, seemingly chaotic life that had a definite purpose.

We can’t see that purpose, nor really adequately reflect and evaluate, unless we dispense with the drive to acquire and hold onto what we have acquired. We have been there in the second phase long enough. There no longer is any pleasure, any sense of fulfillment in continuing to do it. Many do for many reasons, the greatest being obsession, insatiability, fear of leaving what seems to have been working.

A major theme of this series of essays I have posted in this blog deal with objective for the third stage. We are here in this stage to first give up our acquisition phase. It is time to reflect and evaluate. It is time to acquire the wisdom that is able to be drawn from what we have done, so that wisdom can tell us what it has been all about and its meaning for our going on.

As I have been writing on this theme for this series of essays and throughout all of my writing, I have had this question of myself: This has been my experience in this third stage. Is it true for everyone? I don’t see anyone else really talking this up but me.

I give myself two answers.

First our style of life is such that no one has any time to think. We are continually out of time because of all that is on our plate needing completion. When we are not working at it, when we should be at “R&R” Reflection and Review we are distracting ourselves instead.

The convenience accessible to us, whether it is television, smartphone, internet, recreational activities, reading, all of our time that is not directly productive is a one sided activity of being distracted for the fun of it.

It is in this way that our minds never are put in play. It is all packaged from introduction, to presentation, to conclusion, than it is done with. We are then ready to go to the next distraction or it is time to go to bed.

That is the life of too many. It is just too easy to be that without ever having to let a thought or a concept bounce around in your brain.

Wisdom comes to those who can get off this fast moving train before it is too late. When we do we will find the time to smell the roses, view the beauty of the circumstance we have lived and do our sums with all the phases, events and episodes.

When we add it all up, the total is in part Transcendent. We have found wisdom. Sadly our society will not accommodate that, it is more prone to put us in the “Home” and “Soporify” us with the latest designer drug to keep us calm.

The real loser in this is you and me. If we don’t do all there is for us to do in this life, the balance of life says “ok, do it all over in another circumstance, another algorithm, another life!

Unfortunately the society outside of “I” “Me” “Us” will not seek us out to be edified by all we know. At best we can know it and certainly, it is in our interest to know it. This is so because our purpose in life is to sow seeds, nurture their growth and then harvest their fruit.

It is in this Harvest that we find what is to be. It has been my gift of life that everything that went before led me to where I was diagnosed having Dementia. Horrid as it can be to live a slow disabling, disruptive, debilitating disease from which there is no escape, for me it is my Gift of Life. Life has disarmed me and made me look beyond it. This has been my blessing.