Growing Better

We usually talk about growing older, or wiser, or worse -- but almost never, about growing better -- as though that can’t be achieved by a deliberate, systematic process. It’s almost as though we think that such a desire would jinx us -- and doom us to calamity after calamity, when in fact, good things happen because people prepare a solid foundation for those developments, rather than simply hoping against hope, that something miraculous will happen, in spite of their despair and expectations only for the worst.

Expectations have a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies -- or at the very least, projections and expressions of who we really are, and our fears and anxieties about the world. Many of those anxieties are about their declining powers and abilities in later life, as they come to realize that they no longer will fulfill many of the dreams (delusions) they had early in life. But is that the end of life, or the beginning of a closer connection with reality? -- and is that necessarily a bad thing?

While undoubtedly people grow older, a few grow better doing so, while many others undeniably grow worse with age. But is that the only fate of age and experience -- or is something else entirely different possible? That is the quantum leap of these times -- into a life never lived before, because all those elements favoring and supporting such an existence did not exist before.

First one develops a baseline of support one hopes never to have to rely on -- but will be there, in the worst case scenario. But from there, one hopes and works for better -- and not simply resigns oneself to the worst. So while it is great to have that safety net -- that should not be one’s highest aspirations, or even the average expectation of what life can be for those who choose to discover and create a life that has not existed up to now except in the great legends and visions of such ultimate human possibilities.

But that is the story of what every life should be about -- and not the long legacy of interminable struggles and pains just to get back to “normal,” or average.

The history of conditioning and fitness up to now, has mainly been about getting back to normal -- rather than superhuman, which I think is more about an integrated existence rather than the deeply fragmented and conflicted one of epic struggles -- which is the “literature” of the past. For that reason, for the last twenty years in particular, I realized that one had to create a new language to begin to express those possibilities of full actualization, as the norm in human life and experience.

We now have such luxuries -- to go beyond to this next level -- in which the standard becomes the complete life in harmony and synchronicity with every part of life -- rather than simply spinning our wheels ever faster, against every other part of life. When we see and understand that, life grows better -- as we are no longer working against ourselves, to overcome ouselves.