Illnesses of aging

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

3:45 a.m. Jon, if you have an agenda, let’s proceed. Otherwise, perhaps we can address the questions posed by Jim Austin in a comment on my blog.

Let’s address his questions, which are good ones. But we will address them from an angle he may not have been considering.

Nothing new there! Seems like we’re always addressing things from an unsuspected angle. In fact, you could say it’s the motto of the firm. Here is Jim’s comment.

[Comment by Jim Austin on Illness as Indicator, 4-14-25

[“Perhaps Jon would discuss his views on the changes that come with ‘advancing years’ … what they might be indicating. Or if those (considered inevitable) deterioration, aches and pains, and weaknesses even fit into this present discussion.

[‘From the post today it seems that as we age, we resonate with different parts of ourselves (as indicated by changing health, vitality, and wellbeing). To:

• remind us that physical life is ending, so tie up as many loose ends as possible?
• push us to ‘get it together’ for existence in non-3D?
• look deeper into life (on both ‘sides’) to see/feel the Oneness and the distinctions?

[“Guidance and I work on this, so other viewpoints would be appreciated and helpful.”]

[Jon:] The simplest approach would be to remember what you got in yesterday’s drumming: Every challenge is also a gift. Put that text in here, too.

[“Stick to the idea of a gift and a challenge being the same thing, different aspects. This is the key to many things.  Be a little careful about banishing things because you think they are “bad” or inconvenient or challenging. Spend time drawing connections between seemingly external problems and hidden internal problems. And the same, by the way, with gifts. If something external favors you, ask what it connects to within you. resonance, after all, is resonance.

[“Remember that your goal is not perfect health in the sense of no challenges. It is, more, perfect health for you, bearing in mind that sometimes physical challenges prevent or substitute for emotional or other challenges that might be harder to deal with.”]

It helps if you keep your eye on the ball. What is 3D life all about? Endless prolongation? Achievement of some kind of bodily perfection? For that matter, is it even about achieving anything? Or is it about striving, rather than achieving?

That almost seems to say that by definition, we are going to remain unsatisfied.

No, whether you are satisfied with your life is a matter of your willed choice. You can be satisfied or dissatisfied less according to circumstances than according to temperament. But you will never be perfectly fulfilled (regardless of whether you are satisfied) because, by design, life has more possibilities than can be manifested.

Yes, I think we’ve got that: All that extra potential leaves us free to change directions.

So, then, consider your situation, a more-than-3D creature in a 3D span of years. What are you there to do?

To create ourselves, if I understand it right; to choose among possibilities.

And can there be an end of possibilities?

Theoretically, you mean?

No, practically. Could anybody ever use up all their possibilities?

I suppose we could run out of possibilities that we had a chance to manifest.

You suppose wrong. A helpless cripple on his or her deathbed still has possibilities, and you know what they are.

A choice of attitude toward whatever manifests. Frankl again.

Well, he may have lived to become a cranky old man, but as the saying goes, when you’re right, you’re right.

But I get the sense that when Seth told Jane Roberts she could choose to live, he was talking about more than a choice of how to accept the physical condition that was killing her.

He was pointing out that there was a reason why it was killing her, and that she cold change – could decide, you could say – so that the illness no longer matched the reality she was enduring. But this doesn’t mean quite what it may sound like. He wasn’t saying, magically move to an alternate reality, or parallel timeline, or however you want to think of it. He was saying, she was providing the basis for the resonance between her life and the illness, and if she changed – which was within her power, if she knew how to do it – the resonance would be broken and the necessary consequences would no longer apply.

If she could find the key – just as I was thinking as a kid – if I could just find (or remember) the key.

Now, do you see how this connects to Jim Austin’s question?

Not clearly. I see that it has to do with the conditions being also gifts, or anyway opportunities.

Health challenges, like other types of challenge, present opportunities for greater clarity, if addressed properly. Do you want to learn what’s still hidden from you in your unconscious mechanisms and procedures? A challenge in the 3D world – seemingly external – will do that. Whether you can and do use the opportunities is of course up to you.

There is a tricky aspect to this. Health challenges are external in that they manifest seemingly independent of us, but they’re not external, in that it is our own body, under our own control (theoretically).

Everything in 3D seems external and is also a part of you. That is the whole point of the 3D world as signpost to your unknown inner reality. And if you keep this not-so-obvious fact in mind, Jim’s questions answer themselves.

They do?

Try this:

• As you age, different problems arise. The pattern differs among people, but it is safe to say that everybody faces something, and usually more than one something.
• Each of these “somethings” can lead you to greater specific insights, and often enough can lead you to things you can still do something about. It isn’t about reaping what you have sown (though it can be that too), but about life continuing to serve up opportunities.
• It isn’t so much tying up loose ends as reviewing what else remains possible to take into account. “Loose ends” is one way to think of it, but less with the idea of tidying up than with the idea of seizing the day.
• It is true, you could look at it as preparing for your next phase of life, only don’t stress the future over the present. It is still necessary to be here, now, while there is life and breath.
• As to looking at “both sides now” and seeing the underlying oneness: That is a possible side-effect, but not the main purpose. The main purpose is for you to continue to do what you can, as much as you chose it. Realization of the oneness of internal and external doesn’t necessarily follow. For some it will, for some it won’t.

Now, bear in mind, health challenges are not the only thing in life. Some people live healthy lives right up to the end, and then their 3D self dies. That doesn’t mean they haven’t met plenty of other kinds of challenges.

I can see that.

And remember always, it doesn’t matter what you think you know of someone else’s life. You’ll never have the real flavor of it, any more than others will know the flavor of yours. In that sense, all lives are private. This isn’t about secrecy, it’s about the impossibility of seeing all aspects, and particularly the difficulty caused by the fact that 3D always imposes point-of-view limitations – perspective. Fortunately, you don’t need to know everything about anybody (even yourself!) to know enough to get a feel for them as a fellow soul on a journey like your own.

I can’t tell if we have given Jim what he needs.

He’ll know, and he or others can always ask further questions.

True. Okay, well, thanks again, and till next time.