Seasons of the Soul

Accepting Life

     It came to me as I was pondering something about my own life that earth is a sorrowful planet. Everything that comes into existence here goes through the process of decay and death, and by the very nature of that, we all have something and someone we will lose at one time or another. In fact we will go through the same process ourselves. Age shows us that. Loss of loved ones affirms it. The older we become, the fewer our contemporaries.

     Unhappiness about life and death comes as we cling to the illusion of immortality in the flesh. Our media bombards us with messages of youth, of defying age, of turning back the clock. It avoids showing people who are elderly and look their age. We shun the harsher realities of life as though they are a plague descending upon us. Yet in all our attempts to outwit and outlive life, we are filled with a stressful attachment to something that cannot be. Once we are able to acknowledge reality, affirming that sorrow is part of life, we are freed from an impossible task of keeping it from being other than it is.

     Suffering is so often about grasping. Once we adopt an attitude of acceptance to the greater reality of life/death, we are cling free. And then we can begin to enjoy the life that we DO have, rather than work so hard at avoiding the life we are afraid we won’t have. No one knows what life will bring. We can make elaborate plans, but in the end, our days are numbered. Whether we live long or short lives, the amount of time is not important. What is important is the way we live our lives. What we make of what we’ve been given is our declaration of being vibrantly alive on the planet, no matter what our age. We don’t have to hide the wrinkles, or mask the creases on our brow. They are the etchings of our journey, not reminders of mortality, and we’ve earned each character defining moment that we embody.

     The world is sorrowful. It’s the way of life. But so are breathtaking moments of love and beauty.

KJ

Book Review

Presence of Angels, A Healer’s Life

By J.C. Hugh MacKimmie

Ever so often a book comes along that makes you want to sit down and lose yourself in the story. MacKimmie’s book, Presence of Angels, is one such book. It is filled with stories of his youth, growing years, and the chiropractic practice that became his avenue for healing work. The wit and wisdom in the book is delicious. The miracles are inspiring, and the idiocy of our humanness will make you look at where you aren’t paying attention in your own life to the messages from guidance that tell you how to avoid problems or make the most of your health and your potential.

MacKimmie isn’t pontificating. He lived his life as willfully as many of us. Overcoming polio, liver cancer, paralysis, and other life threatening ailments all point to a bigger reality than we think logically is available, and a more powerful healing power than drugs and surgery. The author had a link with intuition from an early age, but like many, did not always follow what he was told to do. And therein lies the rub…being human. At age 77, he is sharing his retrospective and giving us the benefit of his own experience to help us navigate this thing called life. And being human himself, he has no illusions that we’ll all sit up and do what he suggests. However, we will think about it!

One of the amazing elements of the book is the healing power that is sandwiched within its pages. When MacKimmie was guided to write the story, his guidance told him that he would touch more people with healing through the book than he did during the entire years of his active practice (and he treated well over 100,000 people). He was also told not to go through normal PR channels to promote the book – that the angels would handle the connections. And they are.

This book is a page turner, and although it is 477 pages, I was saddened when the end came. I wanted it to go on and on, so I decided to pick it up and read it again. There are enough memorable passages and side-splitting stories to make you feel you’re with an old friend as you take the journey a second time.

If you want to do yourself a favor as the New Year begins, read this book. It will set you on a journey of conscious awareness that may indeed be what you’ve been longing for.

To read more about the book, go to www.knowingheart.com. To order the book, call 1-800-214-8110 between 8 AM – 5 PM central time, Monday through Friday. The book is $19.95 plus $4.55 S&H.

Reviewed by Kathleen Jacoby

cnekj@aol.com

Wake Up Boomers!

I put on the blouse that had been adorable when I’d bought it, but now it was baggy and faded. “You’ve lost your cuteness factor!” I said by way of apology as I took it off and placed it in a pile of clothes to give away. Then I looked up and caught my own reflection in the mirror. “You’ve lost your cuteness factor, too. You were cute when I got you, but now you’re fading.” I realized I couldn’t give me away, though. Had to make peace with the reality of change.

We all come in with a cuteness factor and then as time goes by, we begin to fade just as plants and animals do after full bloom. It’s a hard thing to reconcile, especially for those of us born in the Baby Boom years. We had the world by the tail and our slogan was “Don’t trust anybody over 30!” HA! The chickens came home to roost as we left 30 and now enter the geezer years – way beyond 30.

For the early Boomers, an identity crisis has been brewing since we hit the magic marker of 30 way back when. Slowly, the noisy voices of idealism got quieter. Those of us who were the Flower Power generation of the 60s became the yuppies of the 70s and then sort of faded away as Reaganomics took over in the 80s and the dot.com revolution exploded in the 90s. We watched as the world changed at a dizzying pace, leaving us a bit perplexed, and held back because we no longer felt relevant.

Our children thought our generation was lazy and “me” oriented. They were right to a point about the “me” part – but we weren’t and aren’t lazy. Idealistic, yes. Misguided at times, perhaps. But the generation that defined protests and did a lot to make way for a world of free flowing ideas and human/women’s rights still has a lot to share. We’ve just been quiet. Waiting. Observing. Pondering. Confused. If we’re way over 30, can anything we have to share be relevant or of value?

It’s time Boomers. We are marching into the elder years and have to redefine what that means so that we don’t fade away in obscurity. We’re not made of shallow stuff. We have voices that need to be heard. What have we learned in the intervening years between the time when we were the predominant generation to this point in our lives, and how can we best bring these voices forward to contribute to the knowledge base and wellbeing of our grandchildren’s future? How can we redefine older age so that people are no longer thrown away, forgotten, or trivialized? If anyone will do it – it’s going to be us.

I’m not talking about cheating age. You can only do botox and have so many face and body lifts before gravity overcomes. We don’t have to chase after a youth that we’ve already had, but search the content of our interior world to see what we’ve become. What richness is lurking inside? What has mulched through the years waiting for us to pluck the gifts of living in a way that makes us valuable and validating.

It’s time. We need to rise to the occasion and make our presence known. We have to overcome the dilemma and amazement that we’ve actually become elders. We need to shake off the notions that older means dumb and dumber or useless and outworn. We aren’t. My blouse might have lost its cuteness factor, but I actually haven’t. It’s just a different type of “cute”….perhaps acute! So, I’m calling to us. Let’s wake up and find a collective voice to stir ourselves again – to protest obscurity and being cast offs, or of casting ourselves away. Its’ time to wake up and speak up with acuity…..again!

KJ

Then and Now

On the Today show they had a 50s retrospective – with dance contest and judges. Katie Couric was dressed in a poodle skirt, pony tail, and Mat Lauer had on a black leather jacket and a DA haircut. It brought back a lot of memories, because I began my teenage years in the late 1950s and remembered the music, the look, and those great saddle shoes with white bobby sox.

Pat Boone and Little Richard were two of the judges for the dance contest, and both are in their golden years. Pat Boone just started a record label for artists from the past for those of us who would like to hear the kind of music we really grooved to during our own growing years.

Several years ago I heard about a study that was done with people who were seniors. They took individuals from a nursing home and put them into a house that was completely restored to look exactly like things would have been when they were in their prime. They had radios, music, and magazines from that era. Everything was geared toward bringing these people back to themselves as vital, youthful individuals. The results astounded the researchers. The health problems lessened. The vitality rose. The enthusiasm and sense of hope was renewed, because suddenly this group felt relevant. They were no longer cast offs.

We do that in this country. It is truly amazing how we waste talent and experience of groups that don’t fit our 15 minute attention span idea of reality. Little children are trivialized or made to be older than they are before their time. People over 40 begin to feel that life is behind them when the life expectancy is now somewhere in the mid 80s and beyond. Our range of what is “in” is trivial. We have left ourselves nothing to enjoy at each stage of life as we are either rushing to become a certain age, or lamenting its passing.

My generation – or the one just following me – bears responsibility to a point for this preoccupation with self, youth, bad manners. The Baby Boomers made it quite clear that no one over 30 was to be trusted, and the generations that followed agreed. This generation has not shown the kind of character that our parents had. It has brought some revolutionary concepts to the fore and developed a field in which youthful ideas are highly prized, but it has not demonstrated depth of experience and understanding that previous generations had. After all, they went through real suffering that we never had to experience. Our big woe was Vietnam. Theirs was the First World War, the depression, and World War II. They learned at an early age that things do not always stay the same. And it gave them resilience and character. We never learned that.

Even though I am technically a war baby, I was right on the cusp of the booming birth rate, and I experienced the changeover from the innocent “Happy Days” 50’s to the tumultuous drug infested 60s. It happened while I was in college. Over the summer of 1963 everything shifted. It wasn’t gradual. It was immediate. And it was as though someone cut out a huge frame of change and just put the end result right in front of us. Boom. Just like that. Sexuality exploded. Free love was everywhere. And so were joints. People were drinking and smoking – and the music shifted as dramatically as everything else. Vietnam heated up, and those who pierced through the veil of reality through usage of LSD and other mind altering substances began to bring their visions back to the rest of us, insisting that what they saw was “real”, and what we were doing was bogus.

As I said, I had one foot in the old world, and one in the new. I didn’t really like either.

I always liked older people. I was an only child, so adults were my companions. Children seemed childish – as they should have been. I grew up way before my time, but gained insight into people that has always benefited me. The elders had great stories to tell. I loved hearing about an old family friend’s growing up years in the Swiss Alps. She lived the life of the character in a book called Heidi that I enjoyed so much. Then there were the stories of time before the depression and how the stock market crash affected each of the different adults I knew. I wanted to know about these things. Even at that age, I was an investigator.

What I got from the stories of these elders was a richness of texture that seemed lacking in the then present time. These were people who wanted to forge ahead in a new way after the restraints they’d felt as a result of the depression and the war. They were upwardly mobile – and in that, they were spreading throughout the country as companies began the “transferring” trend that tore extended families apart and sent us hither and yon. They were making the money to afford better houses, nicer cars, and to give us kids the things they never had. But in the midst of all of this, we lost the soulful connection to one another. Generations began to split up. As my aunt and uncle were transferred to a city far away, our weekly get togethers were no more. The grandparents were off on social ventures, and again – the fabric was weakened because we didn’t have that special bonding experience that requires time together and attention.

By the time the 60s came about, everyone was scattering. The children of the depression babies were now entering teenage years with a common theme that parents had unwittingly instilled. “Me-ism.” The majority in this new generation did not have to go to work early to help contribute to the family support. This generation didn’t even have that many responsibilities. The parents wanted to shield us from the harshness they’d endured, but in the shielding, they robbed us of feeling that we belonged and were part of something bigger that required our contribution.

Saving people from character building is not always saving them. Sometimes it causes a feeling of disenfranchisement or entitlement. And we see how these seeds planted by well meaning parents has reseeded and produced secondary and third generations of people who don’t feel responsible for anyone other than themselves. And even then – with our attitude that everyone else is responsible but us – individual accountability is questionable.

KJ

Trusting the Journey

Recently, three friends moved to the Bay Area. Each believed they were coming for a specific reason, only to find that what they came for did not materialize. Each of the friends dealt differently with the disappointment. One felt betrayed. One got mad, and the third saw life as a continuing adventure.

The first person saw herself victimized by unfairness. “Just my luck!” she would say, projecting a cloud of gloom and victimization. She became passive and withdrawn, waiting for something outside of herself to make everything right. She was unable to accept what happened, and would not take action to do something different. She spent her time nursing her hurt.

The second person assigned blame to others for things not working as he expected. He was unwilling to look at his lack of planning as part of the problem, and took out his anger by attacking others. He did not ask what  was to be learned from the situation, but continued to make decisions based on anger and emotional responses in the moment. As a result, he became reactive rather than pro-active and remained locked in the blame game. 

The third person realized that the reason she moved here was obviously not why she was here. She set about to find clues as to the purpose for being in the Bay Area, and began immersing herself in all the  personal growth activities she could find. She was open to possibilities, willing to extend herself to them, and as a result,  made incredible connections, achieving major breakthroughs within herself. She recently joined a spiritual community...something she always wanted to do, but thought could never happen. She trusted the journey, and although could have been equally or more disappointed than her two friends who at least have family and friends in this area, she is the one who believed that there is a greater plan unfolding, and that her requirement is to trust in the journey and pay attention to the clues..

I think this is an important example for us all. Everyone has major disappointments at one time or another, yet when we see life as an adventure, a wrong move becomes a right move, and we affirm ourselves and the bigger picture by finding the gift in the roadblock and the opportunity in the obstacle. The message is that we must trust the journey.

KJ