Rachel Naomi Remin – spirituality of aging advice

“What if I never marry or have children?”

Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, 67, clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine and author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings: “I have encountered two of women’s greatest fears: I’ve been single all my life, and I’ve had Crohn’s disease [a chronic inflammatory bowel disease] for the past 51 years. I always wanted to be a mother. I was one of the girls who played with dolls until I was 12 or 13 years old. I had the names of all my children picked out. Having a family was a major life dream. When I was diagnosed at age 15, it became clear that dream might not play out. Then as the clock ticked down toward 40, it was even more clear I probably wasn’t going to be a mother. Because of my illness, it was very difficult for me to maintain a relationship. Men of my generation were looking for someone to take care of them, and I needed someone to take care of me.

“I hear women say, ‘If it doesn’t turn out the way I planned, what then?’ Life is basically full of broken eggs. The whole art of this thing is finding your own recipe for making sponge cake. My mother’s final words were ‘I am satisfied.’ How do we live so that at the end of our lives we can say those words? I have done that. I have learned that I can be a mother in many different ways. The people who are unhappy are the people who get stuck in one way of doing it. You have to have a sense of possibility. Of course it’s a remarkable, life-altering experience to have your own biological children. As a former pediatrician, I’ve seen people transformed by this profound experience. But you can still grow people, even if they don’t come from your own body. There are so many who haven’t had parenting. You can be a mother to them. For the thousands of medical students I’ve worked with, I have done that.”

Adult ADD – from Mona Lisa Schultz

Learn now to pay attention and feel like you’re sharp as a tack, or at least not, as they say, the dullest tool in the shed.

Woman with Satellites

In a world that drives us crazy with all that information that comes at us from everywhere, it’s so easy to feel like you’re losing your mind. It used to be that the world was so much simpler with less information to keep in mind and fewer balls to juggle in the air.

You remember when we got news on the TV or the radio. We only had four channels. Remember how you had a TV with the rabbit ears, or a hangar with aluminum foil. You’d get four channels, CBS, ABC, NBC, and if you were lucky and you put the aluminum foil a certain way, you’d get PBS. And then, when you went out to your car, you’d get AM and you’d get FM. If you had a phone, you got one call at a time, and if someone tried to call you, and you were talking to someone else, they got a busy signal, and they’d just have to wait. There was no such thing as call forwarding or people with multiple lines. But today, the world is not so simple. There are so many more channels of information that bombard your brain at any time, it’s so, so overwhelming. It makes you feel that you’re driven, distractible, and have ADD.

There are literally thousands of channels and ways of getting information, either satellite radio or satellite TV. Then we have cable, iPods, cell phones, voice mail, we have so many different ways of getting information, that it’s no wonder that we are driven to distraction. However, most of us don’t have the typical ADD that people fling Ritalin at or Adderal at. You know, the type that’s distractible, inattentive, and impulsive – the kids who get the Ritalin thrown at them usually have problems paying attention to details. They can’t pay attention to the work for long periods of time. They don’t follow through with their homework. They’re disorganized. They don’t plan ahead. They lose things all over the place, and they’re hyperactive. They fidget in their chairs, they leave their seats, they’re always running around. They’re so driven. It’s easy to say, just throw Ritalin at that person. We’re going to learn how that particular type of brain may have problems paying attention in the classroom, learning in captivity, if you will, but that type of brain may be uniquely designed to be a satellite dish for intuition.

You my have trouble, in your forties, your fifties, or even later, paying attention in the world and you may feel that you have late onset ADD or early onset dementia, but that’s just not the case. There are four basic ways in which you can feel like you’re developing attention deficit disorder (ADD), and there are ways in which to solve those problems.

The first of four different ways of feeling that you’re losing your mind, you can’t pay attention and you can’t remember is if your hormones are a mess and your immune system is on the fritz. If you have chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, environmental illness, chronic infections like sinus infections, allergies, if you have rheumatoid arthritis or some other kind of joint problem, or if you are in some type of treatment for cancer like chemotherapy, when your immune system or your hormones are on the fritz, you are not going to be able to pay attention, and you’re going to think that you have ADD and you’re going to want your doctor to give you Ritalin and that would be a mistake.

The second type of distractibility is when your emotions are a mess or you’re panicked and frenzied. If you have depression, if you have anxiety, panic, it’s hard to pay attention because all of your circuits are focused on other emotions, and there are many people who think they have attention deficit disorder and they feel somewhat better initially on Adderal or Ritalin, but after a month or so, their brain is a fuzzball again.

The third type of attention where you think you have ADD is when your attention is elsewhere, something else is bothering you inside. All your attention circuits are busy, so you’re not going to be able to pay attention to the outer world in class or at work and you’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to think you have ADD, and you’re going to want medicine for it, and once again, medicine will be a mistake.

The fourth type of attention deficit is when you have satellite dish intuition, and that is where your attention problems are really a form of intuition. Your attention may be focused intuitively on others, people who are in pain, agony, or suffering, so much that it’s almost like your bi-locating. Your brain is with someone else and it’s not present at your desk at work or at home with your partner. In this particular situation, someone might say to you, “Hello! Base to Ruth? Come in Ruth!” You might feel like you’re a space cadet or a space shot, and they might want to medicate you, but in fact, your problem is not ADD, you have a problem with intuition.

So, what do you do if you have these four problems? This morning I did a reading on John, 29, he called me for a reading said, “What do I do? I’m making so many mistakes at work.” When I read him, I saw that he was working in an organization that was horrendous. There were people over him that were very impatient. I didn’t even think it was the right company for him. When I went to John’s body, I looked at his head, it felt all red and inflamed. I looked at his neck, thyroid, heart, breasts, lungs, every area of his body, and I saw that his bowels were in an uproar and his skin was all red. And in fact, John had hives. He said, “Why am I making all these mistakes? Why can’t I pay attention, and why do I have these hives?” I said, “John, your intuitive guidance is telling you through your distractibility and your rash that this is not the right work for you. You need to look for a better organization where you feel safe and secure.” Because John had so much inflammation in his system, his mast cells and his immune system were releasing cytokines, cortisol, and norepinephrine. They were literally frying his brain apparatus for attention and preventing him from paying attention.

The second type of attention deficit disorder can be seen in Tina, 43. Tina called me for a reading and wanted me to tell her what her health was letting her know what about her life was out of balance. I said, “Tina, you had huge trauma in your life growing up. There was drama. There was violence, and in fact you feel like the issue of home is terrifying for you.” When I got to her body, I saw that her brain and body were responding to the trauma from the past, reverberating. I saw that her brain felt like a fuzzball. Her mind was always going on panic and the fritz. I looked at her chest, and it felt like she had pressure in her chest, it was hard to take a deep breath, and in times she felt numbness in her hands and her toes. And in fact, Tina told me that she had post-traumatic stress disorder and panic attacks, obsessive compulsive disorder, and she wanted to know if she had ADD as well. I said, “Tina, so many of your brain circuits are focused elsewhere due to the trauma that you had growing up (she told me that she was an orphan at age 12, both her mother and father were killed in an accident), that so much of her panic circuits were in the past, that not much attention could be focused on today, and so that medicating her for attention deficit disorder would be missing the boat completely, that she has to deal with the appropriate mode of treatment for her trauma, and then she would be able to pay attention to the present.

Whether your problem is with your horomones and immune system, emotions or you have satellite dish intuition where your intuition is going to loved ones or those around you who are in need, so you can’t pay attention to the present, because you’re paying attention to their lives as well, it is important to get in touch with how your distractibility is part of your intuitive guidance system. It is necessary to learn the earliest signs when your intuition and your attention is going somewhere else so that you can focus on the present. You will want to explore ways to prime and treat your immune system if that’s what’s causing you to be distractible, to prime your attention if your emotions are out of balance, and most importantly, to learn to recognize and use your intuitive guidance if that is causing you to be distractible so you can return your focus to the present.

Spirituality of Aging: Attitude is Everything

The Midlife Transition often triggers thoughts about getting older and getting on in life. Perhaps a more pertinent thought to ponder should be: “What does it mean to age successfully? According to some experts, it’s not enough to just tick off the birthdays. “Successful” aging requires deliberate forethought, a conscious effort and the right attitude.

Attitude is 90% of the aging issue. It has been said that the results of life’s twists and turns is 10% of what happens to you, and 90% is what you do with what happens to you. No doubt there is a physical decline that comes with age, but he counters, this decline is one that can be mitigated and shaped rather than given into. It’s that very decline that can become the spark when coupled with the experience gained through the years. The end result can give older adults, while different than the past, as much of a fulfilling, exciting, and fun life as they enjoyed in previous years.

Climbing Mt. Everest at 93 years of age might be theoretically possible for some, but not realistic for most. In his book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing, (1995 Warner Books) Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Zalomi coins the phrase, “conscious aging” where a person ages deliberately and intentionally. He advocates living life as it is rather than allowing life to live us.

For those who seek to consciously participate in the aging process, here are some specific methods for developing a more positive lifestyle and attitude:

• Be realistic. Maybe you don’t have the energy or the strength of your youth but you are more creative than ever because, and over the years, you have learned about yourself, your strengths as well as your opportunities to grow (some mistakenly call these opportunities weaknesses.)

• Take risks in life. Life has always been a series of risks: getting married, flirting with financial disaster by connecting yourself with one company for a lifetime, having children, serving in the military. The real goodies in life require risk-taking, a stretching of the envelope, a willingness to try new things.

• Respect your own opinion, especially, your inner self. While culture might try to suggest that you are ‘out of date’ because you can’t (really don’t want to) operate the latest electronic gadget, you have learned more about life and living through experience, something that is much more valuable.

• Be flexible and adaptable. Older adulthood should be the time of the greatest flexibility because there is a perspective on life that can only be sculpted by years of experience. Older people have already experienced significant change and have survived, even thrived. The change in age is the only difference from those of the past. Who knows what lies beyond this specific challenge?

• Take on new challenges and learn new things. It has been said that a person only grows old when they can no longer learn. Many people treat the past as a fortress to be preserved rather than a foundation that enables them to grow and risk and learn. Don’t forget that while some challenges of the past were painful, most became life-giving and renewing.

• Deal with pain and losses, but don’t hold on to the suffering they bring. Suffering is in the eye of the beholder. A person can be in pain but not suffer as well as suffer but not be in pain. Pain and loss often signal something ‘old’ is dying in our life. We need to look for the new that always is there, if we are attentive, open and ready to receive.

• See the half full glass. Be optimistic. You have successfully coped with challenges in the past. Why not the challenges of today or even the fears of the future?

• Take care of yourself with healthy eating and regular exercise, not only of the body but of the spirit. Take time to walk, to reflect, to consider, to remember. Read a good book, one that interest you but never had the time to read until now. Many find meditation as essential to life as an hour at the gym. But don’t forget to go to the gym as well.

• Don’t accept society’s myths as true about you. Society sees aging only in terms of decline. Because older adults are not able to DO the same things that they did when they were younger, they are to be pitied and even marginalized. But as an older person once said to me, “There are some things that a person just can not learn until age 85.” To quote Dr. Jacob Pressman, Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Ben Am in Los Angeles, “As it takes a village to rear a child, so does it take a lifetime to create a fully human being.”

• Don’t deny your age, learn from it. It is teaching you the life-lessons of wholeness that you have always been meant to hear.

– from the Center for Spirituality and Aging

Soul Purpose – From Alan Cohen’s A Deep Breath of Life

The Main Thing

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. -Anonymous

The rascal Nasrudin stood on the bow of a boat next to a pompous intellectual who began to quiz him on his education. “Have you ever studied astronomy?” asked the professor.

“I can’t say that I have,” answered the mystic.

“Then you have wasted much of your life. By knowing the constellations, a skilled captain can navigate a boat around the entire globe.” Then he asked, “Have you studied meteorology?”

“No,” answered Nasrudin.

“Then you have wasted most of your life,” the academician chided. “Methodically capturing the Continue reading “Soul Purpose – From Alan Cohen’s A Deep Breath of Life”

Follow Your SOUL to Avoid Midlife Crisis

‘Tis the Set of the Sail — or — One Ship Sails East

Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1916

But to every mind there openeth,
A way, and way, and away,
A high soul climbs the highway,
And the low soul gropes the low,
And in between on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.

But to every man there openeth,
A high way and a low,
And every mind decideth,
The way his soul shall go.

One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
‘Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
‘Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.