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Deepak Chopra _ Living Without Loneliness

Posted on July 18, 2019July 19, 2019 by Dr. Toni

The state of loneliness can be crippling. Though the majority of people don’t find themselves consumed by it, they do feel its effects. Their inner worlds shrink and dry up. For others, the issue looms over them like a specter in the future rather than as present reality.

The only real answer to loneliness is to experience your own fullness. Then and only then can you be sure that you will not look inside one day to find holes, gaps, unanswered fears and a sense of lack. Here are steps that enable you to become true to yourself. They aren’t magic bullets, and I recognize that loneliness, like every other psychological state, has degrees of severity. But whether you look on being lonely as a mild or severe issue, the same solution applies. The three steps are given in no order of priority; consider adopting all of them.

Step 1: Have a Vision That You Devote Time to Every Day

Happiness experts often advise that the best way to have a happy life is to have a happy day. I’d modify this a little. The best way to have a happy life is to have a happy day that looks forward to tomorrow. The future is something you build toward, and the place where you build is inside yourself. Society offers a different image, telling us that we should work hard for 20 or 30 years, postponing fulfillment until the end. This makes little sense to me. Why wait for golden years on the chance that you will still be strong, optimistic and full of promise?

It’s much easier to be that way now. Use your present energies to build your future in the following ways:

Write down a single vision, project or mission.

Set time aside every day to work on it.

Make sure that work consists of doing research; making connections; investigating your target audience or market; learning from projects similar to yours; challenging your assumptions; writing a proposal; seeking a mentor, a partner, or a confidant to bounce your ideas off of; and raising capital if needed.

Set interim deadlines that you can reasonably meet every month.

Be adaptable about changing your project as it unfolds.

If you can commit yourself to these steps, you will experience the kind of optimism and vitality that builds over time. Vision is the same as long-range purpose, which is something everyone needs. Someone might counter that I am simply giving career advice. If you do the kind of work that can embrace a long-range vision, that’s great. Not everyone is an entrepreneur or a top executive, however. For most people, a personal vision is just that—personal. They want something bigger than themselves to become dedicated to. The arena may be community and family. Whatever you choose, make sure that you are finding fulfillment every step of the way. Your vision aims at self-expansion.

Step 2: Put Yourself in a Context for Fulfillment

The solitary life is suitable for very few people; the vast majority prefer social connections. We all have them, but are yours the kind that fulfill you emotionally? If not, then the whole value of relationship is being missed. Proximity isn’t the same as bonding. There is a sliding scale for bonding, from least to most intimate, which is as follows:

I have nice friends and enjoy their company.

I have at least one close friend in whom I can confide; this friend is like a part of me.

I am bound with a loved one in a deeply personal relationship. We have our own private world together.

I have someone in my life who inspires me. I feel bigger and better in their presence.

I am on a deep spiritual path, and someone as dedicated as I am walks beside me.

I feel blessed to be in the presence of the divine, which I feel through everyone I meet.

Relationships reflect who you are inside, which is why the experience of bonding can go from shallow social contact to the merging of souls. If you want to be true to yourself, find the context in this scale that reflects your inner life, and if you don’t really know where that is, consult a friend, a confidant, a mentor or a therapist who can help. You need to speak with someone who can give you a clear view of yourself (which far more important than someone who is friendly and sympathetic).

Once you find the right context, build upon it. Relationships exist for the purpose of mutual fulfillment. If they exist for other reasons—status, financial security, feeling wanted, meeting the social norm—you can certainly be happy, perhaps for a long time. However, that’s not the same as being true to yourself deep down and allowing intimacy to move into the region of the soul.

Step 3: View Your Life as a Process, a Never-ending Journey

I know lots of people who say, “I want to feel young,” but very few who say, “I want to feel timeless.” As long as you live between the end points of birth and death, life is like a conveyor belt heading inexorably for a black tunnel. The only time that never ages is the present moment. “Living in the now” has become a spiritual cliché, but it isn’t always a useful one. Helpless infants live in the now, and so do Alzheimer’s patients. The now becomes eternal only when it is full. When your being is enough to sustain you, complete fullness is at hand. When just being here elicits bliss, you are timeless.

Being isn’t a choice. We all possess it. Yet we spend endless hours trying to escape it. As the poet Wordsworth lamented, the world is too much with us late and soon. We run after external rewards; we feel restless and anxious if we look inward. In essence, we are desperately trying to escape ourselves. When we run out of energy, money, playmates and toys, what happens? Utter loneliness.

Life is a process of finding yourself and living in contentment with what you find. It’s not an expedition to reach a distant mountain peak. It’s not a trail marked by things you can tick off, like a college diploma, a first house, retirement in Florida. The process is at once intimate and simple. You learn to be. This is the highest meaning of being true to yourself.

You can learn to be every day:

Set aside some quiet time.

Meditate.

Be aware of areas of discomfort and address them.

Assess your state of well-being.

Commune with nature.

Become absorbed in a creative pursuit.

People will often call these things “losing yourself,” which is true in a limited way: You are losing the ego self, with its cares and desires, its restlessness and disquiet. But in a larger sense you are finding yourself. The core of yourself is calm, centered, unshakable and fulfilled. The reason we look outward to find fulfillment is that we haven’t yet settled on the place inside where being and fulfillment are the same. Working to find the same contentment after you grow up will get you to “organized innocence,” as it has been called. You have absorbed a wide range of life experiences. You know what you know and can do what you do. At the same time, there is a secure sense of being deep inside. Usually we think of this as spiritual seeking, but words like God, spirit, the soul, salvation, carry too many associations. Perhaps it’s better to call it “the process” and leave it at that.

The process of unfolding requires no work or struggle. You are totally connected to your being right now, as you always have been. The only thing you’ve lost is the awareness of your connection. As you expand and become more aware, what happens? You need less and less from the outer world and other people. You realize that security, love and joy are innate qualities of being. They can’t be lost, only forgotten. So the highest project you can devote yourself to is self-discovery. In the end, loneliness will seem like a phantom, something barely remembered. Yet even today, if you start to discover who you really are, every moment will be the opposite of lonely. You will be absorbed in the essence of life, and nothing is more fascinating.Read more: http://www.oprah.com/inspiration/living-without-loneliness-how-to-feel-more-fulfilled-deepak-chopra#ixzz4kvZLCMwe

Conscious Aging Movie

Posted on July 18, 2019July 18, 2019 by Dr. Toni

Strangers in Good Company(Touchstone, 1991)

A group of long-lived women take shelter in an abandoned farmhouse when their tour bus breaks down. While they wait for other transportation, they share the stories of their lives with each other.

Strangers in Good Company(Touchstone, 1991)

Myths About Aging Brain

Posted on July 18, 2019July 18, 2019 by Dr. Toni

from AARP

There is a lot of nonsense promulgated about ageing brains. Yes, we find oursevles forgetting names or losing too much time looking for our reading glasses but most beliefs about cognitive decline in old age are myths.

A few weeks ago, the Global Council on Brain Health (GCBH) which is an independent collaborative of scientists, health professionals, scholars and policy experts that was convened by AARP and recently issued their 2017 report on cognitive ability and brain health.

Here are seven of the myths identified in the GCBH survey as reported by AARP:

“1. Older people can’t learn new things. Not so. Trying new activities can actually stimulate cognitive skills. Seeking out new social connections that involve learning names and information about the people you meet, going back to school and taking up a new musical instrument are just a few examples of activities that can boost your brain health.
“2. You’re stuck with the brain you were born with.Also not true. Brains are made up of cells called neurons. While it’s true that most of the neurons are created before birth, studies have shown that new neurons can be created in the area of the brain that deals with learning and memory. Researchers hope that by better understanding how new neurons are created, they can help individuals with brain injuries and neurodegenerative diseases.
“3. Experts don’t have a clue about how the brain works. Actually, scientists are learning more about the brain every day. Granted, it is a complicated organ. But new treatments for neurological conditions are coming to light, and researchers expect exciting breakthroughs down the road.
“4. It’s inevitable that older people will get dementia as they age. Not true. Dementia can be caused by Alzheimer’s disease or age-related events, such as a stroke. But getting older doesn’t automatically mean you will get dementia. And it doesn’t mean you are developing dementia if you can’t remember the name of an old acquaintance you run into at the grocery store.
“5. Learning a new language is for the young. It is usually easier for children to pick up a new language, as sentence structure tends to be less complex for them — and they tend to be less self-conscious when trying something new. But adults also can learn a new language. In some countries, such as Sweden, it’s common for retired people to take classes for a third language.
“6. Older people are doomed to forget things. Being forgetful about details such as names and facts happens to everyone, no matter his or her age. Poor memory can often be attributed to lack of attention. Some helpful tips on remembering include writing things down (such as shopping lists) and taking note of visual details associated with your surroundings.
“7. Just take memory training, and you’ll be fine. Not exactly. While it’s a good idea to look for ways to fine-tune your memory, if you don’t practice those skills and keep challenging your brain, all that hard work will be wasted. It’s the ultimate ‘use it or lose it’ advice.”

There are a lot of things we can do to maintain our cognitive abilities as the years pile up. (By the way, widely advertised “brain games” are not one of them. Repeated research over several years has shown that their value is iffy at best.)

But cognitively stimulating activities are. Here’s a GCBH infographic about with an overview of how to keep challenging your brain:

And here is a GCBH library page with links to many other sources of brain health information.

Lessons in Letting Go

Posted on July 18, 2019July 18, 2019 by Dr. Toni

It happened to me again. I was in the market shopping. The aisle was a bit tight with two other people trying to pass at the same time. I turned quickly to get out of the way and out of nowhere a sharp pain grabbed my hip. I stumbled, almost falling, but caught myself on one of the shopping carts.

You may have had a similar the experience. It happens sometimes, usually without warning. Arthritis seems to grab at a joint in my hips or knees. There’s a sharp pain and it’s as though for a moment I lose control of my body. I know it’s not uncommon. I often hear people my age talking about their bodies just not doing what they want it to any longer. That’s exactly what happens to me.

One of the unsettling things about aging is the loss of control. As I begin to experience these little interruptions that catch me off guard, like a sharp hip pain that causes me to stumble, I pay more attention to those who experience far greater losses in mobility. If I allow my mind to wonder, I recall the crippling effects of arthritis evident in my mother and the years my father was bed-ridden with Parkinson’s. I try not to think too much about those things because it leads me to wonder: how long before I am next?

Yet, when I’m reminded of the increasing limitations in my own body, my experience of loss of control, I try to keep focused on this loss as a natural process. I hope to ease into it. I also remind myself that this physical process parallels the process of spiritual growth and maturity.

When one becomes more attuned to the spiritual dimension of life, experiences of self-fulfillment, peace, and wholeness are common. In these early stages, spirituality is often equated with personal well being. But that’s just the starting point for nurturing the spiritual dimension of life. (And yes, it is an essential place to start.) With maturity comes the growth is letting go of self, self-fulfillment, and self-satisfaction to allow for the experience union and communion with that which we experience as greater than ourselves: the universe, the Divine Mystery, the heart of transcendence. This maturity requires us to let go of control over self and, in a sense, to allow self to melt away in moments of communion with something more than we can easily describe.

The process may sound odd and mysterious or perhaps even absurd. Yet, we experience this process each evening when we sleep. In order to fall asleep, we must let go of all control over our activities and responsibilities, allow our minds to clear and our bodies to relax, and in doing so, we let go of awareness to sleep and to rest. This pattern is part of the natural cycle.

The pattern of maturity that leads us to let go and not have control is a basic pattern in life. That pattern is found in the rhythm of sleeping and waking, of growing in spirituality so that we release egoic preoccupation to experience communion with the Holy One, and in the physical changes we experience in aging. Just as we cannot prevent the sun from rising and setting or the seasons from changing summer to autumn, so too this cycle of losing control is part of what it is to be human. It’s something to simply embrace as a unique dimension of what it is to be alive.

While it may seem trite to some, perhaps the simple wisdom in Twelve Step programs says it best: when we want to hold onto the illusion of control, we just need to, “let go and let God.” The control we think we have over life is nothing more than a passing illusion.

I’d honestly prefer not to have arthritis. The stiffness and occasional pain is frustrating. I don’t like how it slows me down. But slowing down….that’s at the heart of living a life of balance rooted in the spiritual dimension. Keeping this in mind, perhaps the aches and pains of growing older can be a way to refocus on our need to let go and be open to the deeper Mystery which sustains all life.

Photo credit: CCO License Source: pixabay.com

From Ram Dass – Still Here

Posted on July 18, 2019August 20, 2024 by Dr. Toni

As our roles shift in older age, so does our sense of community, and feelings of isolation often accompany elder life. When I spoke about this to Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Zen Master, he said that despite the information age and advances in technology, which allow us to communicate with each other so rapidly, “one human being can’t be with another human being [through technology]. A father can’t be with a son, a mother with a daughter, a father with a daughter, a friend with a friend.” It’s harder and harder for human beings to be together, even though they can transmit information to more and more people all the time.

Although relationships change in all stages of life, it often seems harder to find new connections to replace the ones we lose as we age. This effort to stave off loneliness and to replace missing connections can sometimes take extreme forms, as in a case I read about in which a Japanese man hired a surrogate couple with a baby to visit his elderly parents because he didn’t have time. The old people spent the day pretending that these strangers were their actual family, talking about their “grandchild’s” health, how much the baby had grown, and so on. Before the surrogate couple left, kisses were exchanged and promises to visit again soon, and they were paid by the son an equivalent of $1,150 for their time and thespian abilities.

“Now and Then” photographed by Betina La Plante

Caring for someone else is one way to combat loneliness. In response to this need, some older people have taken it upon themselves to be of service. Laura Huxley created Project Caress, a public space located in a shopping center where mothers and fathers can leave their babies while they shop. With a registered child-car professional in attendance, older people volunteer to come in to hold and cuddle the babies. The babies and the elders alike benefit from the contact. Although we may yearn to be quieter as we age, human beings have an inborn need for social contact that must be honored if we are not to suffer, and part of our conscious-aging curriculum must include finding ways to satisfy this yearning. We long to reassure ourselves that other hearts exist; to affirm our own existence through the presence of others. An older couple I know – he’s a psychiatrist, she’s a meditation teacher – have a big, beautiful home, where they raised a large family. After the children moved away and started families of their own, my friends were left rattling around in their big house, until one day they said, “This is a waste! Here we are in this wonderful house – why don’t we fix up the basement and move down there, and give one of our kids and his family the upper floor?” Their son and his family really benefitted by having the house, and my friends enjoyed the cross-generational companionship.

Through a strange set of circumstances, another friend of mine found herself starting a family she never intended to have. At the age of 69, she became the sole caregiver for a six-year old child. Here was a woman traveling the world to give seminars, writing books, being an intellectual, who suddenly had her life “interrupted” by a child she could not turn away. For the first few years, she bemoaned her fate, but slowly this changed, and she and the child are doing fine. She even admits that her life is better for this unexpected change of plan.

Even though, as Thich Nhat Hanh reminded us, we can not be together through technology, cyberspace can afford us a different way of maintaining connection in older age. No longer bounded by geography, we can meet in the brave new world of the Internet and spend time as companions in virtual reality. A woman speaking on National Public Radio recently reported how she’d used her computer and her internet contacts with people all around the country to get through her depression and loneliness after the death of her husband. A year later, she’s become the one who is counseling and supporting other recent widows in a chat group on the web. A friend of mine who is approaching seventy is teaching her still older next-door neighbor, a shut-in, how to surf the internet. My friend, who loves gardens, shares (among other things) a spirited international internet chat group on gardening. I foresee that computers will play an increasingly important role in engaging elders like me in educational and social participation, relieving us of the hassle of moving our arthritis-ridden, aging bodies around so much.

These sort of creative solutions to how we want to live as we get older are often more available than we think. Unfortunately, many of us are too caught up in the cult of independence to see these possibilities; either we don’t wish to be a burden on others, or we don’t wish to be burdened by others. Either way, we find ourselves more isolated than we need to be. In speaking with hundreds of elderly people, I’ve noticed a distant pattern of loneliness among those vaunting their own independence. We become Eleanor Rigbys, waiting at the windows of life. The “achievement” of living on one’s own is diminished by the sense of being ignored or left behind. This diminishment can become a barrier standing between our egos and the rest of the world, increasingly solid and hard to cross. Whether through shame over our own aging, or through fear of dependency, we should be vigilant about this tendency to isolate ourselves as we get older. To offset it, we might seek out community centers and other meeting places where peers congregate, or consider alternative living arrangements such as assisted-living centers, spiritual communities, and multiple-age communities set up specifically for bringing people of all generations together.

– Excerpt from Still Here by Ram Dass