Ep 161: Ageing Mythology, Vitality and Conscious Living

Can sickness, weight gain, and loss of vitality actually be avoided as we age? In this illuminating episode of Truth and Transcendence, we challenge the deeply ingrained beliefs surrounding aging and explore the fascinating concept that our perceptions—and not aging itself—might be the real culprits. Join Catherine Llewellyn as we uncover how an active lifestyle, much like that of the farmers in her UK community, can keep us vibrant and connected to the present moment. 

We'll also delve into the idea that the anxiety around aging may be a first-world problem, born out of our improved living standards and increased leisure time. What if our habit of "pasting and futuring" distorts our sense of time and creates a false scarcity of opportunities? Drawing from wisdom shared by spiritual leaders, we explore how raising our level of consciousness can expand our experience of time and make each day feel miraculous. Tune in to understand how while our bodies may age, our essential vitality and spirit remain ever-alive and full of potential.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Truth and Transcendence brought to you by being Space with Catherine Llewellyn. Truth and Transcendence, episode 161. Today's topic is aging, and I want to talk about the illusion of aging. Most of us seem to have this belief in the inevitability of sickness, becoming overweight, loss of vitality, as if that is inevitable when we age. And I can see why we might believe that, because it's more common for people, as they get older, for those things to occur. There are, of course, exceptions, people who are very vital, who are lean and fit and healthy and who don't get sick. I wonder what proportion of the population that actually is. Of course, it varies from country to country. I'm in the UK, so I can only look at those who are around me.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Around me, where I live here, a lot of people are farmers and they have to remain active right until they drop. How their diet is or what their nutrition is, I have no idea, but they're out in the fresh air, they're moving around, they're connecting with nature and that obviously is good for them. I don't think they sit around thinking about aging particularly, and I think one of the reasons for that is because they're pretty much in the present moment. Every single day they have to get up. Muck out stables. If they've got horses, they've got to check that the cows are all right. Move the sheep to a different field, possibly check that there aren't infestations and parasites and God knows what going on. Deal with the weather. Deal with the farming equipment. Deal with all of that Every single day. There's something they need to do. There's no time to sit around wallowing and thinking about something like aging.

Speaker 1: 2:15

Personally, I think that this whole illusion around aging is a first world problem. I think that because now, on average, the standard of living is so much higher, we're able to get by much more comfortably, with less effort, than would have been the case 50, 100, 200 years ago and some people would argue with me and say that's not true, but I actually think that is the case. We've got more time to sit about thinking and anxietizing and worrying and what we used to call pasting and futuring, which is where we shoot our consciousness into the past and relive and re-examine and re-imagine and reinterpret, and shoot our consciousness into the future, where we're thinking about what is there to come. And one of the effects of pasting and futuring is the almost inevitable conclusion that as we've been here for more years, therefore, there are fewer years left to us because we're going to die at some point, and if we're going to die at a particular point, then the further we go into our lives, the sooner that's going to be, and therefore there's less opportunity for us looking ahead.

Speaker 1: 3:37

All of this is illusion, based on our conception and perception of time and transition and reality and how long it takes for things to happen. Somebody said I think it was probably the Dalai Lama change is not a problem. Change happens in an instant, but preparing for change can take many, many years. So, actually, when we get older, particularly if we have been doing the work reflecting, meditating, doing whatever it is that has helped us on our path to raise our level of consciousness and become more connected with reality and the truth of our own soul and spirit, for many people in that position, as they get older, it feels like time actually is expanding, because each present moment feels infinite, each day feels like an endless day of wonder and the miracle of life. I've actually heard very elderly people just sort of chuckling to themselves, as they really resonate with that reality and they really kind of connect with the mystery of sheer existence. More progress-oriented, more materially oriented.

Speaker 1: 5:13

Perhaps then is the time that time becomes scarce in our imagination, our opportunity becomes scarce. We start to believe there's a limit, there's a lack, that we're limited in our opportunity. So all of this is about perception and the way that we relate with who we are and where we are. Now we know that the body dies. We don't know about the rest of us unless we do know. And we are not the body, we are something else, and our essential vitality is vitality of the spirit. And yet moving the body and experiencing the body opens us to a sense of aliveness. So how about that? We're not the body, and yet the relationship with the body, moving it, experiencing the body, opens us up to a sense of aliveness and actually helps reconnect us to the vitality of the spirit, which is one of those beautiful ironies of being human. So I'm suggesting that when we're in the present, we are not aging, we simply are, however many years we've been here.

Speaker 1: 6:22

There's also an illusion that the brain is slowly dying, that gradually, neurons or whatever it is that's going on in there, the brain is slowly dying, that gradually, neurons or whatever it is that's going on in there, is falling away, and that therefore we are slowly, slowly disintegrating in the brain. Now that everyone's learning Sudoku now and doing all sorts of mental exercises and conscious dance is great for this as well, because of the multiple decisions that have to be made in every given second of movement, all of this is refreshing and rejuvenating for the brain, and not just the body. I think this, but unfortunately, our belief in aging creates the sense of aging. So if we believe in aging, what tends to happen is that we stop doing the things that keep us vital. We start to reduce the scope of our perception, we start to reduce the vividness of our experience perception. We start to reduce the vividness of our experience Now. That then creates a feeling of aging. Everything becomes more gray, we become less sensitized and we start to feel like we are aging, which also then encourages the attitudes and the behaviors that assist decline.

Speaker 1: 7:59

I haven't got much time left. There's no point kicking off the project now. I won't have time to see it through. I've only got so much energy. I need to husband my energy Now. While it is true that we need sleep, we need nourishment, we need all sorts of things, and the nature of what we need does alter as the body ages, but the vitality of the spirit is not actually aging.

Speaker 1: 8:27

However, we can suppress our own vitality of spirit by believing in aging and by making choices and decisions based on that assumption and that belief, rather than the assumption and the belief that the spirit is ever, ever young and that the body is transient it always has been. None of us are going to get through this in one piece. I forget who said that the goal of life is to be thrown on the dung heap of life like a worn out slipper at the end of life. So that's the body and even some of the mental resources, but not the spirit. Not the spirit. The belief that as we are older, we have less opportunity is a materialistic illusion. It's based on the notion that time is limited and finite, which it isn't Actually. The opportunity we have when we're older is perhaps even greater with the experience and resources that we have at our command. So we're experts at stripping ourselves of hope, imagination and meaning by believing in something like aging, and we are also utterly capable of reversing that trend. So, wherever we are in that particular loop if you think of a loop, going up and down and up and down, where up means that we have hope, imagination, a sense of meaning. We're connected with our vitality of spirit, we're being creative, we're living life fully in the present moment. And when we drop down in the loop, we are believing in aging, we are more dispirited, we believe in limited opportunity, and so on and so forth. Wherever we are in that loop, we can actually reverse the negative trend and boost the positive trend, because we all have the capacity to shift our consciousness and we all have the capability to. If we don't find ourselves readily able to do that ourselves on our own, to seek out assistance with that. We have resources, we have imagination, we have intelligence, we have people around us. We have people around us, we have books, we have video, we have multiple, multiple sources that can help us reconnect with that sense of immortality of spirit. So this is not about denying the march of time and the alterations in the physical body. This is about accepting all of that and not giving it power over the spirit, over the heart, our aliveness, our devotion to our path, our generosity and our sense of meaning.

Speaker 1: 11:30

Timothy Leary allegedly said on his deathbed apparently he was asleep Suddenly woke up, sat up and said why not Lay down? And went back to sleep and later that night passed away. What an attitude. And he allegedly said that senility was the best trip ever. He was one of the founders of the years and years of work investigating psychedelics and their potential healing properties and a powerful resource for human expansion. So when he said senility was the best trip ever, he meant better than psychedelics and everything else that he experienced.

Speaker 1: 12:23

And he said you are only as young as the last time you changed your mind. So if you believe in aging, the invitation is to change your mind about that, change your mind about that and look at the areas where your mind is fixed and look at changing your mind, and that will get you back in touch with your inherent youth of spirit. So have a fantastic week and I look forward to seeing you next time. And I look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you for listening to Truth and Transcendence and thank you for supporting the show by rating, reviewing, subscribing, buying me a coffee and telling a friend. If you'd like to know more about my work, you can find out about mentoring, workshops and energy treatments on beingspaceworld. Have a wonderful week and I'll see you next time.