A Mantra for
AGING PEACEFULLY
Look for beauty in all things
Expect love at all times
Share from the heart
Be grateful for life itself
And SMILE
My wife Jean and I wrote the above mantra 12 years ago when we first moved from our small but cozy, bungalow of 46 years to an assisted living community. It’s stage in life when everyone when everyone faces multiple SELF to WORLD adjustments but doesn’t really expect.
We were fortunate enough to recognize that given the medical and other conditions of change that were affecting us, we were going to have to make some major adjustments and needed to rethink our lives personally and even even mutually. Simply put, we were GROWING OLDER. No, Call it AGING.
At the time, we both were both retired. Mindfulness was not so much a concern as Soulfulness. Jean immediately became active the community and eventually was elected president of the resident’s committee. I was too busy with the writing of a book to sum up my 25 years of private practice as a social worker to recognize that the mantra we were composing might also be of value to others as well as to Jean and myself. In short, we were adjust but we needed to gather our thoughts.
I had noticed that basic to my private practice were four questions that people used as a sort of checklist, a serices of progress questions:
Who am I?
What’s it all about?
Were do I fit in?
What are were here?
We decided to use it as a basis for the development of our mantra. mantra. At the time, we didn’t realize the possible use of by others to develop a personal mantra relative to their management of SELF to WORLD. Also, the WORLD was not in such turmoil back the. Still I continue to use it. We were personally at ease and didn’t feel the need to find pollical ways of expressing it
Today, the WORLD is in even deeper trouble than it was then. Added to the list of woes we not have several ongoing global wars and the global warming to add to our list of problems. We need today to get beyond the present dualism of MINDFULNESS and SOULFULNESS - Physical, and Intellectual and the one and Emotional and Spiritual on the other. Otherwise, we will continue to be stressed out personally and be at odds with one another politically. Worse, we will disrupt the flow of knowledge that converts into wisdom and passes on one generation to the next.
Even my generation’s more recent attempts at three-dimension learning and personal and political dialogue will not be enough to repair the damage. The fact of the matter is that we are beginning to live in a global community of our own design and it is proving to be woefully lacking in terms of the total wisdom of our humanity as a whole.
Fortunately, mantras like the one that Jean and I composed for ourselves are four dimensional in outlook and help us to recall the ONENESS of life will help us to align ourselves SELF to WORLD daily in today’s highly competitive, computer driven WORLD. To make that transition from SELF to SOUL we need an even higher sense of inner alignment. We need a formula!
As I continued with my writing of a book summing up my private practice as a family and child therapist and community development consultant, I became even more convinces of this. We see the world as three dimensional but we live in a four dimensional one. But to aid our personal transition even mantras that bring to mind a simple four-dimensional formulae that seems to be missing as we continue to evolve through the ages and stages of our humanity itself. Both in the immediacy of our interactions with one another locally and globally and that ongoing learning it generates learning one generation to the next is limited. Both our connectivity personally as families, communities and our generativity politically cultures and nations within the oneness of our growth and development are limited!.
We can develop mantras that are four dimensional for ourselves and use them daily to keep ourselves on track with our lives and we can use them to guide our participation and contribution to the world around us. SELF to WORLD. That’s called contributing to our “collectivity” as a family, as a community, and as a society by professional. And we can use them to feel a part of humanity as a whole on gneration to the next. That’’s called GENERATITY. In either case the process of called AGING. It’s that way we’re equipped. We half four-dimensional brains!
W mantras to recall ourselves daily as part and parcel of a humanity and to extend our personal and political development, But we can also use mantras as formulas like:
MINDFULNESS plus SOULFULNESS equals PEACEFULNESS
By using formulas, we open ourselves up up more totally to the AGING process itself and move from knowledge to wisdom. We realize that we are members of something much larger then ourselves - of a humanity and beyond that, a universe as a whole. In short, it opens us up to Cosmic Awareness. For example formulas like the one above could be used to promote Working Together globally as an alternative to the Violence of War. It may seem like a quantum leap forward and too challenging. But it is well within our reach personally and the mass of it could change the direction not only of our own lives but of our humanity itself. Think about it.
By using four-dimensional mantras to look at life, we no longer see our SELVES in terms of our personal and political differences but also our sameness - our togetherness. We no longer see the other people living in the various WORLDS that interface with ours as their power versus ours. Instead, we see ourselves working together as a common humanity. We move from SELF to SOUL, A friend of mine told me that I should have been a preacher. Perhaps so.
Recent neurological studies suggest that the AGING is a learning process begins at birth - as a SELF that evolves into a SOUL. It is a gradual awareness confirmed by our ongoing experiences. SELF-awareness is governed by the left hemisphere of of our brains and is responsible for our leaning about the physical and intellectual dimensions of our lives.
SOUL-awareness is governed ty the right and is responsible for our learning about the emotional and spiritual dimensions of our lives. The two hemispheres of our brain - right and left - are designed to work together as one.
As a result of our having two versions of the world around us running either side of our brains, there is a constant balancing and re-balancing process going on between the two hemispheres of our brains going on - a shifting back and forth from the SELF-awareness of MINDFULNESS to the SOUL-awareness of SOULFULNESS as we are inundated by information about the world around us and integrate the new with the old nanosecond by nanosecond. It’s the amazing work of a corpus callosum joining the two hemispheres of our brains, consciously or unconsciously.
This is a natural evolutionary process. It’s the ongoing learning that has taken us person by person and generation by generation toward an unknown future - a common human destiny that we contribute to and benefit from. Properly aligned with the cosmic forces of life, it is has enormous potential for our SELF-healing and WORLD-peace making.
Since writing the mantra for AGING PEACEFULLY 12 years ago, a lot has happened relative to my personal and political existences, that is to my SELF and the WORLD around me. I ’ve managed to survive three major operations of surgery on cancer plus two radiation therapies. (Book 1). Jean chose to die with dignity (Book 2). Our mantra has continued to keep us looking toward the future ((Book 3). But the WORLD situation as worsened. I remain positive about life although I miss Jean terribly. I can only hope that OTHERS who are concerned about the WORLD around them and who are positioned more powerfully then me will find these books useful to them. An important part of AGING PEACEFULLY is keeping our ideas moving one generation to the next. Love’s awareness is of our connectivity one person to another. It is also about our generativity one generation to the next.
I write now and self-publish 1) to put together my 89 years of experience in a way that makes sense to me and is useful to me as I take the next steps forward and 2) to make sense to others and is useful to others. I consider it an act of love. I have singled out three of my most recent writings as examples. They are not listed in any sort of chronological order nor are they singled out because they are for sale. They are singled out because they are a part of a lifetime of work in progress. As a result, they tend to wander in search of purpose and meaning. They are clearly one person’s explorations BEYOND MINFULNESS and SOULFULNESS in search of PEACEFULNESS.
ABOUT BOOK I - THE POWER OF LOVE’s CONNECTIVITY: A Case Study of Medical Assistance in Dying
It was at the suggestion of members of my family, that I compiled this book in 2018 from the writings that Jean left behind, particularly from her self-composed obituary which she wrote in the first person and her interviews with trained volunteers from Dying with Dignity. To Jean, her dying was a matter of her valuing life so highly and of expressing her gratitude for living.
In this sense, this book can be considered a user’s case study of a very new and revolutionary system of medical services including: Palliative Care; Dignity Therapy; Medical Assistance in Dying; and Dying with Dignity. But it is first and foremost, it is an autobiographical love story compiled not only from her words but also from the depth of understanding that we developed together.
Medical Assistance in Dying is as revolutionary as it is new. It fact it was as recently as February 2015 that the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that it would no longer be a criminal offence in Canada for physicians to assist someone in ending their life under certain conditions. It was only a year later, on June 17, 2016, that the Federal Government passed legislation that detailed the circumstance in which a person may be eligible for an assisted death. The medical profession is having difficulty in adjusting its practices in response to this reality as we move into the new POST-PANDMIC ERA. But we will need to become comfortable with it through open dialogue on the Internet and elsewhere.
Jean was very open about herself and life. Similarly about death. When we were in palliative care, she managed somehow to meet individually with all of our family members and with her most intimate friends. and she wrote her own obituary and participated in the planning of her celebration of life. She was truly at peace. She wanted people to know about the possibility of dying with dignity.
Our family encouraged me to carry forward Jean’s thinking and to write The Power of Love’s Connectivity. It is about dying with dignityBut first and foremost, it is a love story co-authored by both of us.
About Book II AGING MINDFULLY, SOULFULLY and PEACEFULLY in the NEW POST-PANDEMIC ERA
This book offers a new way of looking at AGING based on recent discoveries about the brain and how it functions. The intent is to develop AGING as a more meaningfully as a lifelong process and as a source of possible solutions for those times and places when we are impacted negatively. It argues that if we are to use the full extent of our brain power in the new post-pandemic era, we will have to be more aware of it and manage it more holistically, that is four dimensionally by merging our learning of the physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual in to one. Four working principles are identified: :
The dignity and worth of the individual person
The development and growth of individuals
The plasticity four dimensionally for change
The ongoing homeostasis for integration and balance
It argues that the WORLD-view that we have accepted for our SELVES is not working as fully as needed. Thus, we are the WORLD that we are building. It is disturbing to feel that we are not on the right track but also it is comforting to know that we are going through a critical time in life together, personally and politically, to the extent that regardless of age or other obvious differences, we can have common goals based on our humanity as a whole and it’s eventual outcome.
To use the full potential of our brain power, we will have to seek new ways to be a part of the rebuilding of the social and economic structures that have been governing our lives. We will have to find new ways of expressing for the sense of balance within us, physical and intellectual versus emotional and spiritual. Left hemisphere versus right hemisphere.
To satisfy the full potential of our brain power, we need to be constantly seek a new alignments, SELF to WORLD, individually and collectively, personally and politically, which are more inclusive of our humanity as a whole with its immense breadth of diversity as well as its unfathomable depth of unity. We will have to move beyond our present state of MINDFULNESS versus SOULFULENSS to the more inclusive PEACEFULNESS where we can feel and learn to value being At-One with the Universe.
The good news is that not only is AGING a life-long process of personal and political discover beginning at birth but also when we are in the latter stages of our aging and are “elders,” there is a new openness to new growth and development. The learning of left hemisphere of our brains becomes less useful to us and the right hemisphere of our brains is more active. Thus, there is a natural shift in balance that is going on within us that we can take advantage of.
The material and intellectual dimensions of our living is less appealing but the emotional and intellectual - and yes, even spiritual space - is more so. Thus we can be more contemplative and feel more valued for it. In fact, this shifting of emphasis goes on within each one of us as we continue to grow and develop personally and as we find new expression for ourselves politically.
Recent research has also learned that we have 8 senses, not just 5 as previously thought. These include the usual five senses of Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Touching and Feeling plus a Sense of SELF, a Sense of OTHERS or WORLD and a Sense of “SOMETHING BIGGER.” As we age, the feed from our sense intensifies and tends more toward a “Oneness” or to be frustrated in sorting this out. Thus the need for a more contemplative lifestyle.
While AGING is a natural process, it is not recognized as such until we are older. But in the new post-pandemic era, we will be more aware of ourselves as aging and we will seek new ways to be a part of the rebuilding of the social and economic structures that have been governing our lives. We will seek to find expression for the new sense of balance within us, physical and intellectual versus emotional and spiritual. We will seek a new alignment, SELF to WORLD, which is more inclusive of our humanity with its immense breadth of diversity as well as its unfathomable depth of unity.”
Clearly, the two streams of learning - MINDFULNESS (physical, mental) and SOULFULNESS (emotional, spiritual) when merged together four-dimensionally as one open the way to our experiencing more fully the kind of PEACEFULNESS that has been hidden beneath the surface our consciences. There is a new potential for learning.
It seems lofty and perhaps a bit idealistic to think of COVID-19 in these context but the findings from today’s research particularly as it has been possible due to today’s technology are suggesting that we have only begun to tap the breadth and depth of our humanity. We have an enormous potential for growth and development, easily capable of meeting the new evolutionally challenges of COVID-19. It means a quantum leap forward for each one of us and for our humanity as a whole. But why not? The point is: we have the brain power for healing our SELVES on an ongoing basis and making peace in our WORLDS. We just aren’t using its full potential. And if we don’t, our brains will use us! The key is our awareness.
we need more positive ways of thinking about life beyond COVID-19. In particular, global warfare, global warming and a myriad of global issues that seem to be beyond our humanity as a whole. Yes. The very survival of our survival is at risk!
ABOUT BOOK iii
TOWARD A MORE LOVING AND CARING WORLD
Although I did not occur to me to self-publish this book until 2014, I wrote it bit by bit over the period of 23 years from 1972 to 1995 that I was in private practice as a family and child therapist and community development consultant. We tend not to think ourselves that way, that is, as having accumulated years of experience in whatever field of work with the result of developing a level of expertise that is valuable one generation to the next. We participate busily - often taking leadership roles what shape the future of our professions and, indeed of our local and global communities - but we don’t value it, it seems. But in fact, there is our connectivity to another on the one hand and also our generativity - our generation to the next. These two processes are intertwined into AGING.
I have reviewed and I am republishing several chapters from this book as I find them to be highly applicable to today, especially as we begin to deal with the global issues being intensified by the new post-pandemic era.
My writing of this book was in response more to the shock of 9/11 than anything else. At the time, I was attempting to find answers for LIFE’S FOUR MOST BASIC QUESTIONS for myself personally and politically; also to document my 25 years of private practice. 9/11 brought war so very, very close to home. But it was four years after the event and was more about its unfolding and more about the condition of universal love going forward. I did not anticipate COVID-19. No one did.
Both events - 9/11 and COVID-19 - along with our more recent realization the myriad of ecological problems resulting from a Global Warming caused by our persistent choice of a 3D lifestyle socioeconomically, is putting an enormous strain on the process of our Aging - of our developing the SELF (left brain learning) and growing the SOUL (right brain learning) and their being merged as One (the work of the Corpus Callosum). It’s difficult for us to think about it that way. Too all encompassing. But it’s reality.
As a result, the various therapies and self-help offerings that are based on ecologically sound practices are going to be an absolute necessity for all of us as we move further into the Post-Pandemic Era. I’m thinking here of parental/child learning, teacher/student learning, manager/workers learning and elder learning. In TOWARDS A MORE LOVING AND CARING WORLD brings as much forward from my practice and related research as I can. Particularly, elder learning was on my mind when I wrote TOWARD A MORE LOVING AND CARING WORLD.
When we retire, we think that our learning retires with us. This has not been the case for me. In continuing self-publishing, I have been very clear about my wanting to passing my learning on. As a result, I have intentionally filled TOWARD A MORE LOVING AND CARING WORLD with quotations from my favorite authors as well as my ongoing learning. Self-publication has been a means of making this happen.
My wife, Jean, was a great help and ongoing source of encouragement throughout the years that it took for me to write TOWARD A MORE LOVING AND CARING WORLD in particular. Truly, a partner.
Start each day by asking life four most basic questions: 1) who am I ? 2) what’s it all about? 3) where do i fit in ?4) why are we here? There are no answers. Only more questions.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jean Ayre wrote her own obituary and planned her own Celebration of Life with the intent of helping others enjoy and be grateful for life in the face of death by becoming more familiar with the notion of dying with dignity. Her words are central to this book. More about Jean →
Don Ayre has put Jean’s words into the context of the new and revolutionary practices that are challenging today’s medical professionals…and us. In the very real sense that these two books are based on their mutual experience and love, they are co-authored. More about Don →
Jean assisted in the writing of Toward a More Loving and Caring World previously featured on this site. The hash marks in the upper right corner of this page lead to additional information and a CONTACT form for visitors to comment or share ideas or resources that they are have. Both books are available for purchase later on this page along with the more recent the self-publication by DON AYRE…
INTRODUCTION: First AWARENESS
My first real awareness of my own AGING was not of a lifelong process of fulfilment. It was only of vague feelings of discomfort about what I had been learning from my family and friends through elementary and high school and on to three degrees of University training the basics of psychology, sociology and even theology.
Even so, I had remained an active questioner, seemingly at odds with the general flow of ideas and learning. But was I living out my life fully enough? Was I seeing the my SELF and the WORLD around me totally enough? It was beginning to bother me. How were the two were interrelated? SELF with WORLD? My friends, in fact almost my whole generation it seemed, were beginning to express the same concerns. It was the aftermath of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the united states of America to end WW II. Obviously, the WORLD that we had been building for our SELVES was not working out!
What was happening was that it was becoming increasingly important - by small incremental steps - that our learning as individual and as a humanity generally were out of synch. It seemed that we were part and parcel of the society that we were building. But we didn’t like the way it was taking shape!
Learning about the WORLD we are living in is gained from our ongoing education and personal experiences from the top down whereas learning about our humanity bubbles up from within. My generation was no long comfortable with the slogans like “make love, not war.” It was no longer were comfortable with protests. Our two stream of learning were not always in synch and we wanted change. The ongoing process of our AGING could no longer be taken for granted.
Then came 1980. The First Global Conference on the Future held in Toronto Ontario June 1980. Over 6,000 attended to hear 60plus academic and learned papers about the future. The theme of the conference was Thinking Globally, Acting Locally. It lasted almost a decade afterwards.
I was asked to present a paper along with Jackson Beardy, an internationally famed Aboriginal artist!. As there was no PowerPoint at the time, our presentation was to be a mix my words from an earlier research document and Jackson’s pen and ink drawings as a slide presentation. 37 people attended.
The pen and ink drawing of Einstein included here is by Jackson. It was his suggestion for the title page of our slide presentation. In my earlier paper, I had described four lifestyles that were vaguely representative of the dimension of each one of us - Lois Riel, Malcom X, Freud, and Albert Sweitzer. Jackson added a fifth: Albert Einstein. There were no doubt others. I had called my earlier paper Human Dialogue and the Emergence of an Ecological Conscience. Jackson and I agreed to keep the title for our presentation although his illustration brought new purpose and meaning to it.
The conference theme was presented by Alvin Toffler who had just released his book -The Third Wave - documenting the looming need for social and economic change. A new global society was forthcoming.
That was over forty years ago! Working with Jackson was an aha experience for me. Jackson was very insistent about the importance of elders to our growth and development as a humanity as a whole. In fact, he insisted on adding a drawing of Einstein to our presentation: “He was an elder to all of us - a global awareness.”
It seems that by reducing our perception of our SELVES and the WORLD around us to 3 dimensions instead of 4, we have short-circuited the aging process and access to our elders, the very maturity of our SELVES and the WORLD have continued to build!
There are four lifestyles and more, by adding in the integration of them as one, five lifestyles needed. I like to call it HOLISTIC AGING to indicate that the ongoing process of our learning has to be four dimensional and that elders have a role.
Our learning as individuals within a global society is limited to three dimensional and it tends to devalue that learning of elders. This means that we have not only greatly diminished our chances of personal fulfilment in life but also our opportunities for political resolutions.
We have limited our very own sense of humanity! We have not only limited our brain power by using it three dimensionally also our capacity for building but we are not building a four dimensional one supported by - physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual.
Our lack of vision is blocking us from tapping the enormous energy field of which we are a part and of and of generating the universal love we need to complete it! Still Thinking Globally, Acting Locally remains as a possible solution.
At the time, neither Jackson nor I - nor anyone else at the First Global Conference on the Future - were looking for a quantum level formula to free up the process of our aging ecologically, But looking back now, it is possible to make the connection.
Einstein was insistent about putting ours SELVES - indeed our HUMANITY - at the center of our universe. Einstein’s famous formula for energy is E = mc². This equation, part of his theory of special relativity, states that energy (E) is equal to mass (m) multiplied by the speed of light © squared
Jackson explained it this way: “My people have observed that We are part and parcel of an enormous energy field that we can tap into. But we are also it’s caretaker and have to treat it with respect.”
According to both Jackson and Einstein, it calls for both objective plus subjective sciences. It calls for an appeal to the left and right hemispheres of our brains. In short, they both anticipate today’s need of an awareness of life that is four dimensional.
1.MINDFULNESS plus 2.SOULFULNESS equals 3.PEACEFULNESS.
4. COSMIC CONSCIOUSNESS - all three totaled together interactively as an integrated and balanced whole.
Similarly by asking ourselves what I have called “life’s four most basic questions” will prompt the bubbling up of our humanity.
Who am I?
What’s life all about?
Where do I fit in?
Why are we here?
It allows us to experience moments of PEACEFULNESS within SELF that are integrated and balanced as a whole and to participate in and contribute to a WORLD that is otherwise vast beyond our imagination. It is the purpose and meaning of our humanity itself!
