Aging and the Art of Buoyancy
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About this ebook
Through the experience of buoyancy, we are free to reconnect to our innermost knowledge and worth, and learn to achieve physical and emotional wellness, and balance in our daily living.
Aging is a new youth full of curiosity, imagination, creativeness and acceptance. Too often it is viewed through false stereotypes, using social expectations and imposed artificial roles.
Aging and the Art of Buoyancy illuminates the importance of living in the moment, unconditional acceptance of universal truths, awareness, observation, personal choice, independence and awakening to the natural powers of healing we all possess. All of this underscores the meaning of wisdom, the very prize of aging.
Follow the author on an inspirational journey as he shares his personal observations and experiences, elucidating new concepts, scientific results, revelations and demonstrating how the power of buoyancy can liberate us to grasp the true meaning of life and death.
Both practical and philosophical, Buoyancy is a work that will open your eyes and fill your heart with hope, purpose, serenity and the urgency to fully exist healthfully in each moment of your life.
David Thomas Dozier
David Thomas Dozier is a freelance writer, poet and fiction writer. His ebook Ordinary People As Healers (With A Personal Sharing of Heart Disease Reversal) is published/distributed by Smashwords E-Publishing. The second revised edition of The Eight Affirmations of Alcohol and Drug Addiction (A Healing Guide) originally published on July 14 2014 is currently available in both e-book and paperback editions. Mr. Dozier's novel The Accidental Lives of Julian Landon has been published in paperback (available at Amazon Books) and in e-format at Smashwords. Mr. Dozier's novel, The Other Side of Impact was published in 2015 in both paperback and ebook formats. In 2016, his novel The Freak was published under the pseudonym Jude Westerman. He is currently at work on a non-fiction book to be published in late 2016.
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Aging and the Art of Buoyancy - David Thomas Dozier
For those who have spoken
Contents
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Part I
MIND AND SOUL WELLNESS
Chapter One: What Is Buoyancy?
Chapter Two: Practicing Awareness & Creativity
Chapter Three: Keeping the Mind Active
Chapter Four: Present Moment Experience
Chapter Five: The Urgency of Personal Independence
Chapter Six: Universal Truths
Chapter Seven: Embracing the Significance of Mystery
Chapter Eight: Six Guidelines for Experiencing Buoyancy
Chapter Nine: So What is Death?
Part II
PHYSICAL WELLNESS
Chapter Ten: A Cautionary Approach to Western Medicine
Chapter Eleven: The Aging Brain
Chapter Twelve: Stress and Depression
Chapter Thirteen: Exercising the Body
Chapter Fourteen: Nutrition and Nourishment
Chapter Fifteen: The Immune System
Chapter Sixteen: The Comfort of Discomfort
Part III
THE FOUR ORDERS OF ACCEPTANCE
Chapter Seventeen: Accepting the Order of Life
Chapter Eighteen: Accepting Yourself
Chapter Nineteen: Accepting What You Can and Cannot Change
Chapter Twenty: Accepting the Infinite
Part IV
THE ESSENCE OF EXISTENCE
Chapter Twenty-One: The Meaning of Wholeness
Chapter Twenty-Two: Existentialism in Simple Terms
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Plasticity of the Spirit
Chapter Twenty-Four: What Is Reality?
Part V
NEGOTIATING
Chapter Twenty-Five: Emotional Transactions
Chapter Twenty-Six: The Curious Dynamics of Altruism
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Emotional Bankruptcy
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Experiencing Rotten Deals
Part VI
BUOYANCY MANIFESTED
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Practicing Buoyancy
Chapter Thirty: The Physics and Philosophy of Buoyancy
Chapter Thirty-One: Desire
Chapter Thirty-Two: Buoyancy and the Energy of Joy
Author Notes
Bibliography
Suggested Reading
Preface
SEVERAL years ago I published a healing guide titled Ordinary People As Healers. It was written following an incredible experience I had after recovering from a serious heart attack and open-heart surgery that left me with a very poor prognosis. Through a dramatic shift in lifestyle and attitude I reversed my heart disease, along with several other ailments for which I had been taking a great deal of medication.
Despite my physical recovery and efforts to increase my resilience in the face of disease, I found myself continuing to rely on well-practiced negative habits and attitudes, particularly those that led me to a critical judgment about medical interventions that had purportedly saved my life but also condemned me.
I realized then that healing occurs on many more levels than just the physical one. I began to focus on spiritual and emotional levels of healing. Thus began a journey that led me to the obvious truth that physical healing occurs because of attitude, awareness and the reconnection to the truths we are born with.
Aging and the Art of Buoyancy presents the rest of this amazing journey into healing and wellness. It references part of Ordinary People, but reaches far beyond into the practical, philosophical, spiritual and emotional experiences of healing and life practice.
The book doesn't answer questions but rather shows ways to view the various issues of living a healing life with fresh new perspective. The beliefs and attitudes regarding western medicine, while in many cases supported by research, are mine and do not reflect either successful or unsuccessful methods of approach and treatment. There is no intended instruction with regards to my recommendations, suggestions and explanations. Advice from physicians and healers is strongly encouraged in all of these cases.
Introduction
What if it were possible to look in the mirror and see all of your physical and emotional illnesses clearly reflected and know that it was possible to manifest healing through awareness, acceptance and by observing the truths you already own?
It is not only possible but is being practiced by many enlightened people around the world. You don’t have to be a practicing Buddhist, a person who engages in regular meditation, a spiritualist or a participant in a self-awareness group. To revitalize and heal in this way requires only you. This is because you alone possess all of the assets, the strength and the powers of transformation and healing. You were born with them, and no one (but yourself) can diminish their values or take them away.
Plasticity is an exciting notion supported by scientific validation which demonstrates the incredible ability of the human brain to heal by reproducing brain cells through neurogenesis and the reassignment of brain functions. It is through this process that a damaged brain can recover and produce dramatic change in physical and cognitive skills. It allows memory and cognitive loss to recover and is responsible for the potential healing from serious disease, both physical and emotional.
What this means is that the body’s healing capabilities empower each of us (if we choose) to manage disease and remain in a beneficial cycle of healing and recovery.
The book demonstrates how the experience of disease and pain can be mitigated and, in some cases, entirely reversed without the use of medication and intrusive methods. Understanding that disease and pain are essential parts of the life experience frees one to accept physical conditions and limitations without fear. It has a lot to do with escaping the drama of roles and expectation and practicing wisdom through present-moment experience.
Aging and the Art of Buoyancy is an open guide to mind, spiritual and physical wellness. Although its title suggests that it has to do with aging, the principles and reflections presented are clearly of benefit to adults of all ages.
It is not a manual for the eradication of disease and pain. The truth is that both are essential to life. Palliative medical efforts to deal with pain will bring you more pain and more fear of death. Accepting both, on the other hand, frees you to fully experience daily joys and to accept the natural pitfalls of life.
You will learn in this book that invariably most of us choose serious diseases, not through conscious selection but through attitude and the default daily choices that make us more vulnerable to disease. The other equally important part of this proposition is that many diseases are well-tolerated by those immune systems that have been made healthy and vibrant. We experience disease on a daily basis but may never suffer symptoms to indicate the presence of that disease. In this sense, disease, life and death are the very definitions of life.
Buoyancy involves awareness, observation, present-moment living, independence and the full acceptance of universal truths, mystery and death. Equally important in achieving buoyancy are mind and body exercise, and proper nutrition.
Serious reflection involves observing and defining ourselves not through the eyes of others but through the clarity of our own inner vision. We are all connected in oneness and often in ways that are inexplicable and magical. Built into each strand of DNA of the human cortex is the remarkable capacity to accept what we cannot comprehend, a buffer between rational understanding and the vast area of the unknown and unknowable. It keeps us safe and most times helps to maintain our sanity. People who are unaware or unaccepting of this important truth tend to live escaping lives. They are immersed in dramatic social relationships, self-fulfilling roles and always mind distraction, an incessant and repetitive thought chatter. Strict religious conviction is another buffer. Some build walls, others escape routes. Embracing what we know we cannot know is a powerful elixir and liberates us to be present in every moment of experience without fear.
This work presents no fanatical methodology, no step-by-step solution to resolving either disease or emotional disorders.
It only attempts to reawaken what is intrinsically known by all: the free, supreme wisdom we are all born with and the power we have to radically change our experiences with disease, as well as the drama that often constrains our spiritual and emotional freedom.
PART I
Mind and Soul Wellness
CHAPTER ONE
What Is Buoyancy?
"You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul."
― Swami Vivekananda
BUOYANCY is the equilibrium derived from practicing awareness and creativity, empowering present-moment experience, acceptance and our connection to universal truths, mystery and wisdom.
It enables us to be in alignment with the natural and cyclical process of healing, and to energize our innate talent to effect dramatic change in ourselves and through us, others.
Much like floating in water, buoyancy is dependent on the natural suspension between the opposing tendencies to accept through rational thinking (one's own and others) and the instinctive capacity to embrace the many truths available to us through practicing wisdom. One is a downward force, the other a rising one.
Buoyancy is dependent on wisdom-generated awareness that leads to the natural evidence of ourselves.
Using the water analogy, our natural suspension does not rely on treading water or forward movement but rather on what fills us to maintain our buoyancy. Yet motion must occur, for that is the very essence of all living matter. In the case of buoyancy, motion is within, an unceasing desire to thrive.
As infants and young children, we are naturally buoyant. While you can't remember what it felt like to feel safely suspended in your mother's womb, you can imagine the security, warmth and containment of the swirling fluids that kept you afloat and thriving. When your mother's water broke, your old world changed abruptly, and a new, more magical one began.
Maintaining the nautical analogy again, during your youth and adolescence you sailed in circular motion as you learned and conformed to the exigent rules of your parents and eventually to those of society, both moral and legal. Discipline and obedience seemed normal and nurturing. But one day you were set free, liberated from parental constraints, now more influenced by exerting your own independence and enjoying exciting new freedoms through personal choice. You set upon a course with an assuring wind in your sails and then began to experience all of the wonderful benefits of what you perceived to be autonomy but which later you learned to be a bargained state integrated with societal rules and expectations. Some fought against those constraints, especially those who were politically driven, and became valiant warriors and vanguards of social and political change. Others sought more comfortable courses in life that included conformity, status quo, competition and the pursuit of success. Some of those, unfortunately, lost their natural bearings and, drawn by the diverse and sometimes conflictive currents of life, found themselves entrenched in jejune and restrictive roles.
Many, of course, have become leaders and inspiring role models through activism and a desire to enrich the lives of others. These are political, spiritual and social leaders, as well as ordinary people who wish to serve others through love, support, teaching and altruistic experience.
What is important to conclude from this paradigm is the fact that we all live according to both our inner convictions and the many currents of persuasive and urgent social (and religious) influences in our lives.
Many of us lose our sense of buoyancy as we progress through life. We do this because we are not fully aware. We become overly-reliant on distractive routine, material need and the reliance to have others make our decisions. Some go to their graves never discovering and nourishing the wisdom that leads to buoyancy.
Why is buoyancy so important? It enables us to reconnect with the awesome truths that form the very essence of the cycle of life. It liberates wisdom, tolerance, acceptance, compassion and enables us to experience the expansive altitude of perspective. It teaches us what we truly need in order to thrive during the experiencing breadth of our lives. It is the essence of our inner affluence.
§
Most of us reach a point in life when we feel we must come to terms with the meaning of our lives. We desire more clarity. Sometimes this is a spiritual awakening, a rational stance, or a need to assess what we have experienced and accomplished on our life pathways.
This may occur in the maturing years of middle age or when we reach our retirement years when there is more time for reflection. Many times it occurs following life-changing events such as the death of a loved one, sudden illness, personal loss and what I refer to as periods of emotional bankruptcy. Depression and other psychological events involving emotional pain can result in the awakening of awareness and clarity. We choose to survive and through that process we begin to heal and live more fully. Most of the time it is an unconscious (unaware) experience. We tend to focus more on the result than on what led us to that recovery.
Sadly, we do not recognize that we can actualize healing simply by being aware of our innate capabilities and the nurturing powers of present-moment experience.
One of the most important factors implied in the definition of buoyancy is the word practice. Reading, absorbing and understanding points of view that you may think make sense and are beneficial in their concepts is only the first small step to acquiring and sustaining that knowledge. When I say that you must practice wisdom and awareness, I am referring to ways to internalize and actively experience those attributes in an empowering and meaningful fashion.
I realize that for some individuals this may not be as easy as following the less-challenging but often more rewarding (though transient) path of societal persuasion and conformity. Personal choice based on social expectations in this case is more important than adopting notions with which one cannot identify and employ naturally.
The following chapters are intended to introduce you to the experience of buoyancy and how this may benefit the way you view life, aging and the meaning of existence. Some is philosophical in substance but most is based on common sense and the ability we all possess to be our own teachers, leaders and healers.
CHAPTER TWO
Practicing Awareness & Creativity
"The Universe contains three things that cannot be destroyed: Being, Awareness and LOVE."
― Deepak Chopra
TO achieve awareness one must freely observe oneself. Many books and guidelines have been written sharing ways to achieve this through organized meditation and by connecting to ourselves.
Let’s face it: we are all intrinsically aware. It is part of human experience. Awareness can translate to seeing and sensing all that is around us, especially that with which we think we have a relationship.
There is a greater level of awareness, though. It lacks any form of judgment, personal reference and relational meaning. It comes from the full acceptance of all that exists, that of our world and the vast, astonishing unknown. Once connected to that awareness, powerful truths become available to us through the realization that each of us is made from those truths. They exist in us as do the protons, electrons, neutrinos and quarks of the subatomic world, commensurate with the coexisting objects and forces that fill the universe. They are the flesh and skeleton of our bodies, our minds and our spiritual containments.
Often we are limited by worldly awareness, the drama of tangible factors in our lives like political, social and established doctrines which serve to distract us from actively experiencing intrinsic awareness. Personal opinion often drives that distraction.
We deal with conflictive beliefs and values through the psychological defense mechanism of compartmentalization. When we are faced with conflicting views, we tend to become more entrenched in our opinion. Sometimes strong or overwhelming points of view blind us. One only has to hear political rhetoric in the news media to understand just how shortsighted human perspective can become. In extreme cases unrelenting opinion leads to violence, both physical and through outright warfare.
Awareness has little to do with intelligence of the IQ kind. There is something called emotional intelligence, which pertains to the ability to identify and manage our own emotions and, as a result, affect those of others. Emotional management lies at the core of these capabilities. It is estimated that 95 percent of the time we are operating on automatic pilot and not consciously aware of what we are doing.¹ On that basis, increased awareness is not useful to many people. Mind-wandering is the basis for awareness and creativity and usually occurs when we are not following a particular routine, for example, socializing or playing a role in drama. Many people describe feeling more content when not mind-wandering. In that way, distraction feels more comfortable. It is like a set of railway tracks, something to guide us in a direction we think is of our choosing but which requires little or no active personal choice.
Mind wandering leads to ruminating, solving complex problems, and exercising creative ability. It forces us away from practiced routine and behavior. There can be a healthy balance between both forms of activity.
Many of us tend to rely on distraction and routine in order to occupy ourselves during times we could be using to express our creativity and potential. We have checklists and attempt to conform to external systems of organization: school and work rules, family, social and relationship expectations. Much of this is non-negotiable, which places even greater pressure on our yearning to be independent and free.
At the core of awareness is observational experience. Some people are naturally observant and often channel their energy through creative expression, whether by painting, writing, sculpturing and through many other creative endeavors. Creative expression forces us to be aware and observant. But you can also be fully observant and not