As we age, it is scary for our minds to realize that we are not as sharp as we used to be, or as quick, or as organized, or as competent. It might happen at age 40, or 50, or 60 or 70. And fear can twist us into knots. When the mind gets afraid, it gets more and more stressed, and the stress accumulates in the brain. You can be having a perfectly normal day and, all of a sudden, your mind can’t remember something: a name, a date, an appointment, where you put something, where you parked, or even what you did yesterday. And your mind can’t handle not knowing everything. So, it crawls back even deeper into its fear-based place where it lives much of the time. When this happens, it is important to remember that we are not losing ourselves. We are losing who we thought we were. This is a very important distinction.
Most people are caught in this very small box of struggle called the mind. We don’t recognize that there is something else going on here and it is called “home.” Home is exactly where we need to be. Eckhart Tolle so brilliantly tells us, “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.” This means that there is a bigger picture here. People who have had near death experiences have often said that they come back to life and realize how claustrophobic it is to be in this small body-mind system. We are so much more than this. Continue reading →