Live Long, Die Short (27 page)

Certainly, as we age, we tend to be more contemplative and likewise more concerned with the spiritual. Thomas Moore, in his number-one
New York Times
bestseller
Care of the Soul: A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life
, agrees: “Growing old is one of the ways the soul nudges itself into attention to the spiritual aspect of life.… The body’s changes teach us about fate, time, nature, mortality, and character. Aging forces us to decide what is important in life.”
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Lars Tornstam, a Swedish sociologist at Uppsala University, calls this period of advanced age
gerotranscendence
and describes it as “a shift in meta perspective, from a materialistic and rational view of the world to a more cosmic and transcendent one, normally accompanied by an increase in life satisfaction.”
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In his inspiring book,
The Five Stages of the Soul
, Dr. Harry Moody is more specific about this spiritual journey of later life, describing it in five distinct stages, beginning with a realization that perhaps what seemed to be of value earlier in our lives is not, and progressing to a stage where we fully comprehend what does have lasting value for us and, as a result, find spiritual fulfillment.
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It’s clear, then, that aging is associated with a metamorphosis for many of us, a call to search for meaning, value, peace, and if we’re successful with this journey, joy.

Why is it, then, we may ask, that so many never find this joy, or even begin the journey? In the answer to this question lies a treasure trove of understanding, of wisdom, of mystical revelation and the meaning of life. This question is so fundamental that every religion, most philosophical theories, and many cults and political constructs have attempted to answer it. In the end, the answer is quite simple. The nearly universal obstacle to finding spiritual health is, ironically, ourselves.

The human brain is a magnificent organ that distinguishes us from all other living creatures. Our ability to reason, our memory, and our learning capability are all unparalleled, and as far as we know, not present in any other living creature. Some of these unique brain abilities, however, have doomed us to wander the earth, driven, confused, distracted, and detached. Why? Our minds are incessantly carrying on a conversation within us or in spite of us, much like an endless soliloquy from a Shakespearean tragedy. This chattering—or as our Buddhist friends call it, “monkey mind”—is a relentless battering of consciousness, which, because we all experience it, is considered normal. We, in fact, think we are our minds! Rather than considering our minds a tool of our magnificent human brain, we humans fully identify with the chattering and believe it is who we are. But we are so much more.

We are souls, or spirits, or mystical creatures who have many exceptional capabilities, including a brain and mind that can reason, and judge, and talk longer than an adolescent girl on her cell phone. As the internationally known spiritual advisor Eckhart Tolle tells us, however,
we are not our minds.
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And as our mind rips around the racetrack of our consciousness, as it pulls us into an imagined or hoped-for future where we will have our to-do list completed, as it causes us to worry about all the possibilities for our own disaster or fantasize about being saved and finding our happiness, or as it yanks us back into the past with regret, or a preoccupation with
what might have been—all these mental wanderings prevent us from being present in
this
moment, where life is lived, where the fulfillment we all seek is, where joy resides, where our journey begins and ends.

Perhaps even as you read this, your mind is leaping about the jungle of your consciousness. I’m getting tired. How long is this chapter? What makes him an expert? After this chapter I have to go to the store and pick up bread and milk. Didn’t I read that somewhere else? My butt hurts. What’s that noise? I should recommend this book to Andy. I could write a book if I wanted to. I feel like a beer. And on and on and on it goes, where it stops … We all experience this and therefore we don’t see it as a sickness, or an affliction. We seek respite from this chattering—in sleep (unless we are one of the unfortunates who cannot shut off this chattering at night), alcohol, drugs, sex, or play. Many find peace in the rush of adrenaline and endorphins as they participate in dangerous activities such as racecar driving, mountain climbing, or bungee jumping. For when you are occupied completely with a life-or-death decision, your mind must be focused like a laser on what you are doing. And so it is ceases to chatter. And it is called “a rush,” “exhilarating,” and “thrilling,” and yes, even “joyful.” Because in those moments of awareness without thought lies what we all seek: spiritual fulfillment, peace, joy.

But of course, we needn’t be pursuing death-defying activities to find the bliss Joseph Campbell urged us to find. Many find their fulfillment in faith, or nature, or music, or reading, or children, or the service of others. It is only when we can find the place Buddhists call “no mind,” places where we are aware, even hyperaware, but without thought, that we experience the peace, fulfillment, and joy of being.

We have all found these places, however briefly. You witness a sunset, and the color and brilliance and silence completely captivate you, and all thought stops, and you feel that all is right in the world. Beautiful. And then it begins—the thoughts, the chattering, the monkey mind. Is this one as beautiful as the one I saw last September in Oregon? What would you call that color? That person with the camera is blocking my view. After this I have to eat. And the moment is gone. The peace and rightness of the moment is gone. And you are already moving on to your to-do list, or you’re judging, or comparing, or worrying about whether the evening will go as you want it to. And you are no longer in the moment. You are being taken over by monkey mind.

Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor’s
My Stroke of Insight
, as mentioned earlier, describes the author’s experience with a stroke that essentially shut down the left side
of her brain, which is the center of our incessantly chattering mind. While she was functioning with the right side of her brain, she experienced what she describes as pure joy, connection with all things in the world, a liberation, a euphoria she called “nirvana.” As a neuroanatomist, she understands what happened to her, and in her many presentations since her recovery, she explains how each of us can actually choose where our consciousness spends its time. We can choose the right side of our brain and experience the joy of freedom from our incessant chattering minds, choosing to be “in the moment,” if only for a short period.

My friends who are artists tell me they find “no mind” nearly every time they paint. Totally engrossed in what they are doing, totally aware of shadows, color, light, and lines, they become completely oblivious of time and feel a contentment, peace, or joy. When we are free of our sense of time and the frenetic activity that comes with it, we are rooted in
this moment
and our minds cease to race, and chatter, and rip us away from life as we feel it should be lived. Perhaps you have found it. Even if just for seconds, seeing your grandchild for the first time, taking time to notice a bird in your feeder, smelling a rose in the garden, meditating, or petting your dog. These are the moments of spiritual fulfillment, of spiritual health. Finding them is critical, in fact, to aging successfully. If we cannot, we become victims to one of the most serious threats to a healthy aging experience: stress, the Big Uneasy.

As we evolved, our species developed a highly efficient mechanism for survival. Confronted with a threat, we fight or we flee. This fight-or-flight mechanism, the stress response, is associated with physiologic changes that enabled us to run faster or fight with more strength. We share this remarkable capability with our fellow mammals as well as lower forms. Faced with a threat to our survival, our levels of adrenaline and other neurotransmitters and hormones spike, with a resulting jump in heart rate, elevation of blood pressure, increase in breathing rate, surge of oxygen levels and blood glucose and fats, increase in blood-clotting ability, and shutting down of all nonessential systems in order to meet the challenge. All this is physiologically appropriate.

But in a world where immediate threats to life and limb are rare,
shouldn’t we be experiencing less stress? How is that so many of us admit to being “stressed out” and that the diseases of high stress, such as heart attacks, ulcers, and psychological disorders, are so prevalent? We wonder, as the title of Dr. Robert Sapolsky’s compelling book asks, “Why don’t zebras get ulcers?
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His answer is clear. The stress response is meant to be fight or flight, mobilized in an emergency, and once the threat to the zebra is over (when he outruns the lion that was looking for dinner), the response dissipates. Shouldn’t it be that way with us?

The answer would be a resounding yes except for our unique capability of generating a stress response with our thoughts. Yes, we as humans, with our more highly evolved brains, are capable of triggering this stress with
thoughts of danger or threat
. The zebra does not worry about the next lion threat. He is at ease after he has escaped. When we think of threats, or imagine ourselves as threatened, we can trigger mechanisms in the more primitive parts of our brain, those responsible for our fight-or-flight mechanism. Our chattering minds tell us we must finish our to-do list, or that the mole on our cheek might be melanoma, or that our grandson might be a drug dealer, or they take us into the future, where we might not have enough money for a long retirement, or where we might get cancer, or Alzheimer’s disease. Or we go into the past and recall perceived grievances or missed opportunities or regrets. It’s the equivalent of being constantly stuck in a cage with a hungry lion. The beast within—the Big Uneasy.

So what does our body do while we’re getting more terrified or angry by the minute? You guessed it. We turn out the neurotransmitters and hormones that then whip our bodies into a frenzy so we can deal with a life-threatening situation. But wait a minute. There isn’t a threat. We created one in our mind. So what happens when our bodies respond as if we’re stepping on the gas and the brake at the same time? We beat ourselves up. We increase the possibility, especially if we are chronically under stress, of serious disease. Chronic stress places the cardiovascular system under considerable strain and compromises the immune system, decreasing our ability to fight off disease and other real-life threats. We say we are stressed, but more accurately, we are stressing ourselves. There is an analogy to help us understand the powerful negative effect of stress. The author of the analogy is unknown but the message is becoming familiar: Pick up a glass of water. It is light and easy to hold comfortably. Think of that glass of water as stress. Pick it up and put it down and there is little effect. Picking it up and holding it, however, for hours, days, weeks, or longer results in pain.

Our unique ability, or perhaps curse, to generate a stress response with our thoughts and reactions to a rushing, time-dominated world to which we have not yet biologically adapted is indeed one of the main themes of this book.

Beyond this physical stress, there’s another dark side to our incessant mind talk. We tend to constantly judge, evaluate, and criticize anything that is not consistent with our deeply rooted beliefs. Any negativity, judgment, or criticism is a denial of what is, and therefore a source of stress, pain, and suffering. In fact, most spiritual teachings tell us that acceptance of the present—as it is, without judgment, resistance, or criticism—is true enlightenment. Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle writes, “All negativity is caused by … denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry—all forms of fear—are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”
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Mark Twain recognized this over a hundred years earlier: “I am an old man and have known a great many troubles. But most of them never happened.”

And so we should seek presence; wherever we are, we can find it. Like the painter, we must seek a “place” where we can quiet our chattering, judging mind and experience
this moment
, this sacred moment, the only place our lives can be truly lived, free of the incessant mind noise that diverts us from finding spiritual health and fulfillment. Even if only for a moment, this liberation of our spirits breaks the spell of our uncontrolled thoughts and the pain, suffering, and stress they bring as their traveling mates.

To get there, we can paint, take a walk and be with nature, listen to Beethoven, spend time with a child, make furniture, or just sit and feel our bodies as we sit—the possibilities are many. Many find peace in practicing their faith. These people find spirituality in religion. Many others find spirituality in nonreligious places. It matters not. What does matter is that we find these places with quiet minds, places where we are completely in this magnificent moment life has given us. Whatever it is, this moment is what it is, and in this acceptance lie peace and joy. This doesn’t mean we “roll over” and not attempt to deal with things, only that whatever we do, we begin with the total acceptance that this “thing” exists, and then fix it, leave it, or accept it.

Thomas Moore, in
Care of the Soul
, equates this search for quiet mind and presence to caring for the soul. “The soul,” he says, “is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart, and personal substance.” He adds, “Soul cannot thrive in a fast-paced life because being affected, taking things in and chewing on them, requires time.”
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