The art of e-wake and the paradigm-shift in being an elder
“What does it mean that the share of over 60-year-olds has doubled in the last 60 years, and soon one in three will be over 60?
What if we regarded old age not as a curse, but as a blessing and generative task?”
These are questions that many – not only older people – ask themselves.
Also those who had come to the “Elders” Symposium: “radikal ALTERnativ” of the german ” Lebensgemeinschaft”(Eco-community) Sulzbrunn (Allgäu) on the last weekend in September soon immersed themselves into the whole spectrum of radical questions about aging.
It became obvious how great the need and disorientation was for some of the participating seniors, who are searching for new answers in their new phase of life.
Where are the answers, and what are transformational Perspektives ?
So how is it possible to be or become a “wisdom-ager” with a zest for life, beyond rebellion and adaptation, beyond norm, performance and the ambition to get the “proper ageing” perfectly right?
Solutions are often searched for exclusively on these “horizontal levels”.
Today, mainstream advice books are en vogue – from nutrition, exercise, better mental fitness to health self-tracking tools (step counters etc.), everything is available on the market. This can – if used carefully – have a relative, limited value.
In the view of e-wake and the perspective of spiritual awakening, however, a comprehensive, radical, life-transforming change of direction is also possible: This requires a willingness and interest in “moving towards” and “presence in”: the vertical level of the deeper layers of our consciousness.
The realization of our own conscious BEING. As a heart-internal BEING in life.
In the here and now. Immediately!
(In this context, the writings of E. Tolle should be mentioned as a first step)
Our heart knows about this “immediacy”: if we open ourselves to our heart and engage with the moment with an undefended heart, a space of new perception may open up, of the natural life that is taking place THIS moment. Of the ONE whole (divine) life of which we are part.
Here is the access to the first e -wake-“portal”: It starts with the “I Wake” (individual I Wakeful-ness).
It is the first great wake-up call to a conscious, heartfelt life in which we can experience ourselves as free, loving, compassionate and joyful fellow-creatures and give our – remaining – life a direction – a new meaning.
What does I wake mean in relation to getting older? In relation to the collective assumption that getting older is a fateful, permanent descent, a disappearing?
Yes, We CAN! Percieving this wake-up call to a departure into an aging process of Becoming NEW – not only as an appeal and food for thought – but also to have meditative “tools” and consciousness tools in your hands , which make it possible to recognize and dissolve inner constrictions of perception. This is not only conceivable, but also attainable!
Yes – a change of direction is possible.
Here and now, and our heart, our intuition as to what is in tune and what is being desired by the deeper life, can show us the way!
There is a practice of being free!
This is what people experience in the context of the spiritual path of awakening.
It is a matter, for example, of confronting the massive, collectively experienced “age depression” that can be found among older people in many “cultures” today, which shows itself in the fact that many “old people” consider themselves to be “discontinued models” or “outdated” and write themselves off. And they do this with a considerable dose of self-deprecation, self-marginalization and self-alienation.
As our seminars on the (R)-Evolution of aging show, these are not individual phenomena but collective manifestations of an image (or concept) of aging that has been held individually and socially for centuries.
Now many of these false beliefs are crumbling, and many “best agers” still expect something from life.
Many are troubled by self-doubt and general insecurity, or a lack of meaning.
Only the willingness to understand aging as an invitation to dive into an inner “vertical depth”, into the already existing BEING of life, makes it possible to feel life itself in its depth and sacredness.
It is about letting go of the attachment to a negative image of age and taking on a new powerful inner attitude.
We can also call it “posture“, which means: the willingness to adopt an inner attitude which assumes that one dimension of us is already free!
If we go through the portal of “I wake” in the e-wake understanding of really wanting to do this, we will find effective micro-practices and awareness techniques.
Thus, it becomes easily possible to free ourselves from the grip of alienated and life-hostile concepts of age, and to release the burden, constriction, and the inner knot of the heart (over time), which makes us believe that aging is a sorrowful decline.
In our Elders Seminars, participants repeatedly succeed in making the leap into an expanded and liberating self- and life-view, as a mindful field emerges in which trust, courage, and playful experimentation with new perceptions are given vivid space. Within the WE-Process- as a COMMON EXPERIENCE: “WE WAKE”.
It was touching to see that this was also possible in the context of an experience-oriented lecture, witgin the context of the Sulzbrunn Symposium with about 70 participants.
We confronted the above mentioned collective age concept in an uncomplicated way and then, in a second step, participants discovered and experienced a state of freedom and witnessed it as a “WE”. A “glimpse”, an insight, an AHA! had arisen.
Being an elder, this was touching me deeply : To enter into a space of effortless “inner exploration” with people, where relaxation, becoming conscious, liveliness and passion for life can be felt directly and sensually.
What if this world of wakefulness (Waking) would expand in our collective fields?
The life song of aging as it begins to sing itself through us, the Elders?
Why not through us, as initiators, with our living, unfolding “wise creative power”?
Many autumn -greetings
Michael